Strength of Spirit
by rhosinthorn
Summary: The battle with Tartaros left many scars, some more visible than others. Without her guild mates, how can Lucy hope to heal? Without anywhere else to go, she travels to Tenrou Island in hopes of getting stronger and finds a lightning dragon slayer with the same goal and his own scars. Can they heal each other? Set after/includes spoilers from Ch 416.
1. Chapter 1

**Note: Fairy Tail and all it's characters do NOT belong to me. I make no profit from this work and it is written purely for my own pleasure!**

**Chapter One:**

Sighing, Lucy set down her bag of groceries before she opened the door. As it swung open, she looked hopefully towards her couch, but was not completely surprised when she found it empty yet again. After setting her groceries on the counter, she checked her apartment completely, but she was all alone. Returning to her groceries, she began to put them away, trying not to feel disappointed, but she couldn't help it. Even though it had been two weeks since the master had announced that the guild was disbanded, she still expected Team Natsu to be in her apartment when she returned, making a mess and eating all of her food.

She found herself studying the place where her guild mark had been. For whatever reason, it had disappeared when Master disbanded the guild. Every time she saw it, she remembered the guild. At least she had stopped tearing up every time. Those first few days had been a nightmare. When she had run to the guild hall, or what was left of it, she had found only a few members there. Master had made the announcement earlier, while she had been heading back to her apartment and finding the letter from Natsu. By the time she reached the debris of the guild hall, only a few people remained. Between the loss of the guild and Natsu's departure, it had been days before she had energy to do anything but cry.

Lucy sat on the couch, not knowing what she was going to do. Grey had disappeared a few days before the guild had been disbanded. Nobody had said anything to him, seeing the haunted look in his eyes, even worse than it had been when Lyon had tried to revive Deliora. Juvia had disappeared not long after, the same look in her eyes. It was assumed that she had gone to find Grey. What had happened during the battle with Tartarus that had affected the two of them to such an extent was a mystery, but given the toll that the battle had exacted, everybody had too much grief of their own.

Her fingers brushed across the keys that hung on her belt, and they instinctively found the broken key. Biting her lip, Lucy felt her fingers tremble slightly. For the first few days, she had tried leaving it off her ring, putting it carefully in a small box, but it hurt too much to feel the empty space. So she put it back on the ring and the ache lessened a little bit.

In the aftermath, she hadn't told anyone about what had happened, what she had to do in order to summon the Spirit King. It was too painful to talk about. The only people who would understand her grief were the slayers, and they already had their own losses to grieve. So she stayed quiet and fingered Aquarius's broken key, and held back the tears when she remembered that one of her friends would never return to her.

A small smile flickered across her lips. Her prickliest spirit would appreciate not being summoned in the middle of dates, although Lucy wondered if she would manage to extend her wrath if Lucy summoned Scorpio away from her. But she remembered the tears in Aquarius's eyes even as the spirit professed to hating her, and she knew that they would miss each other.

With another sigh, Lucy stood up again. She needed to figure out what to do now that Fairy Tail was disbanded. Most of the other mages had already left, either to train, or to find another guild. None of them could really afford to be out of work for a long time, especially her. The end of the month would come quickly enough, and she wouldn't have enough money to pay her rent. But without a guild, she couldn't do anything. Any missions available outside of a guild were unsavory at best.

Tapping her finger against her chin, Lucy considered her options. She could follow Wendy's example and join another guild. Charle had bullied her into joining another guild so she wouldn't have to fend for herself. The young sky dragon slayer had sent Lucy a note once she had reached Lamia Scale to let her know that she was settling in well. Lucy wondered how the other girl felt, losing two guilds in her lifetime.

A knock on her door startled her out of her reverie, and she rushed to open it. Eagerly, she looked out into the hallway in the hopes that it was her returning teammates, but her face fell when she saw Yukino. "Oh…hi," she murmured, her hand falling to caress her keys as she bit her lip to hold back the tears that sprang to her eyes.

The other celestial mage frowned. "Lucy, is everything all right?" she asked worriedly.

"Everything's fine, I just thought you were someone else." Lucy said, keeping her voice calm. "Please, come in. Would you like some tea?" She should have known it wasn't her teammates. They would have come in through the window if they had returned.

Yukino answered cheerily as she stepped through the doorway. "If it wouldn't be too much bother, tea would be nice. I would have gone to the guildhall, but you guys haven't started rebuilding yet. Someone saw me and told me where you live. When are you guys going to start building again?"

Lucy was grateful for the teapot in her hands. "We're not going to build again," she said, focusing on keeping her hands and voice steady. "Master disbanded the guild."

"No!" Yukino gasped behind her. "Where's everyone going to go?"

"Wendy went to Lamia Scale to train with Chelia, and Grey and Juvia are off on their own. Mira and her siblings went in search of Master, who left after he made the announcement, to see if she could find out why. Most of the others either joined other guilds or left on training trips for a while."

"What happened to Erza?" Yukino asked quietly.

"She went with Doranbolt to work on rebuilding the magic council," Lucy said. She knew that the older girl would have rather followed Jellal and worked with Crime Sorcerie, but by the time she knew the guild was disbanded, they had disappeared into thin air. So she had gone with Doranbolt, knowing that she would likely be able to find traces of him once the council was functioning again.

"Why did the Master disband the guild? Was it a matter of him wanting to retire?" Yukino asked. "You guys could have found another master, like his grandson."

"I don't know," Lucy murmured, pouring hot water from the kettle into the teapot she had prepared. "We found out Laxus was gone after the announcement was made. Everyone's gone now."

"Even Natsu?" Yukino asked, her tone worried.

"Natsu was the first to leave." Lucy said softly, her hands trembling. "He left me a letter saying that he was going to go on a training trip before we knew about the guild disbanding."

"You poor thing," Yukino said as Lucy turned towards the couch with the tray of tea things. "At least you have your spirits."

A tinkling of crashing china was heard, and Lucy collapsed in a heap on the floor, tears flooding down her cheeks as she clutched her key ring. It was just too much to bear. She had been trying so hard to hold herself together and be strong, but she had reached her limit.

For a moment, Yukino sat in stunned silence on the couch, looking at the blonde sitting in the midst of broken china and tea, but she soon jumped up to help Lucy up before she could get scalded by the tea. However, before she could reach her, the girl was caught up in a glow that suddenly appeared, and Lucy found herself being carried in Leo's arms. Seeing him, dressed as Fairy Tail's Loke, only made her cry harder, and she clutched his jacket as she buried her face in his chest, sobbing brokenly.

Oblivious to how Yukino gaped at him, he called out softly, so as not to disturb the crying girl in his arms. "Virgo?"

Another flash, and then the spirit appeared. "Yes, brother?"

"If you could? I don't think she'll be able to clean that up before it stains." Leo nodded towards the broken china and tea on the floor of Lucy's apartment as he stepped out of the mess.

The spirit nodded, seemingly unconcerned to have been summoned for such a trivial matter. Leo turned his full attention to Lucy, holding her against his chest and softly kissing her hair, murmuring quietly to her. Once Virgo was done with the china, she dismissed herself, and Leo was left with Lucy, whose sobs were starting to subside slightly, and the two bewildered Sabertooth mages.

"Leo?" Yukino ventured softly. "Could you explain to me what happened? If not, I understand…"

"Lucy?" the lion spirit asked. As she nodded, still crying, he turned to face Yukino. "In the fight against Tartarus, she summoned the Spirit King."

"The Spirit King?" Yukino said, looking confused. "I didn't know Lucy had his key. Actually, I didn't know that he _had_ a key."

"He doesn't," Leo said softly. "The only way to summon the Spirit King is to break one of the zodiac keys, preventing the spirit from ever being summoned again. This can only be done when the relationship between spirit and master is very strong and they trust each other explicitly."

"_Oh no_," Yukino breathed. Almost as if she was afraid to ask, she whispered: "_Who_?"

"Aquarius," Lucy sobbed, one hand grasping the broken key while the other clutched Leo's coat.

"Oh Lucy," Yukino said helplessly, her hand drifting down to touch her own keys in hopes of reassurance. She knew that Aquarius had been Lucy's first stellar spirit, and the other girl had confided in her how she thought of the spirit as one of her best friends, even though they appeared to be constantly bickering. "Is there any way to repair the key?"

Leo shook his head gently, calming Lucy as she broke out into renewed tears. "No, once a key is broken, it cannot be remade. This is the first time that anyone has ever summoned the Spirit King. I do not think there has ever been a mage that could call on him before now. Not only does it require a close bond with your spirits, but it also requires an immense amount of power. Very few mages are capable of holding three Zodiac gates open during a battle."

"She opened _three_ of the gates?" Yukino said, gasping in awe, reassessing the blonde crying in Leo's arms. "Oh Lucy," she said again, at a loss for words.

"Please do not think me impertinent Miss Yukino," Leo said, still cradling Lucy in his arms. "But I think my master is too upset right now to talk with anyone. I think she needs some time to grieve."

"Of course," Yukino said. "We only wanted to see how Fairy Tail was doing. Sting and Rogue were interested in how Gajeel, Wendy, and Natsu were faring after…" her voice trailed off.

"I will be sure the pass the message along." Leo said, turning towards Lucy's bed. "I'm sure she appreciates your sentiments."

"Please," Yukino said, biting her lip as she looked at the sobbing girl in Leo's arms. "Please…tell her if she needs a place to go, she can come find me at Sabertooth."

The Sabertooth girl showed herself out, leaving Lucy alone with her spirit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two:**

Loke sat down on the edge of Lucy's bed, with her still crying feebly into his coat. He had chosen this appearance, the same appearance as he had used when he was known as Loke, to remind her that not all of Fairy Tail was gone. Having the guild disbanded didn't mean that she was the only one who cried. Just because he was a stellar spirit didn't mean that he didn't feel the loss of his nakama just as strongly as she did.

"It will be okay," he murmured, stroking her hair. "They're still alive. Someday you'll meet again. Your paths just diverged for a while. But they're your nakama, and you _will_ see them again. Just because you're apart doesn't mean that you will forget them."

Lucy shook her head. "I don't want to lose them, not even for a little bit!" she sobbed, looking up at her most faithful spirit with tears in her eyes. "I already lost…" and her sobs grew stronger.

"It's okay," Loke whispered again, cuddling her close. "She's not gone forever. You just won't be able to summon her again. Aquarius is still alive and well. If she saw you right now, you know she'd just taunt you about how being a crybaby won't ever get you a boyfriend."

"She's still gone," Lucy said brokenly. "I know she's just in the spirit world, but it's like losing my mother all over again. I know she's in heaven, but that doesn't mean that I don't miss her…"

"Just let it all out," Loke whispered, rocking slightly. "Go ahead and grieve. You've suffered so much, and you haven't just cried it all out."

They stayed like that for hours while Lucy cried all of the tears she had left unshed since the battle of Tartaros. She cried for Aquarius, she cried for the guild, she cried for her mother, feeling the grief anew. She cried for Natsu, Wendy, Gajeel, Sting, and Rogue as they lost their dragons again…

When her tears were spent, Loke looked down and found his master sleeping in his arms, worn out from the emotional rollercoaster that she had been on for the past few weeks. Gently detangling her hands from his jacket, he tucked her into her bed and fetched a damp cloth to wipe away the tear stains on her face. Once he was sure she was resting peacefully, he drew up a chair next to her bed and settled in to wait until she woke up.

Opening her eyes, Lucy was confused for a moment. When she last remembered, there had been sunlight streaming through her windows…oh. Closing her eyes again, she wanted to pull the covers over her head and stay curled up there until things got better. But a rustling near her feet made her sit up hopefully, her eyes popping open to scan the room eagerly.

But it was only Leo, still dressed as Loke, readjusting himself in one of her kitchen chairs, which he had brought over. As quickly as it had come, her hope disappeared, and she bit her lip to keep it from trembling, looking out her window to find something else to focus on.

"Lucy," Loke said, his voice soft and gentle. "Can we talk?"

"I thought I told you not to bother me Leo," she said quietly, still looking out the window. "I thought I gave orders that none of you were to come unless I summoned you."

Her spirit's expression didn't change. "You did give those orders," he said carefully. "But we don't think that being alone like this is healthy. You're not eating enough, and you're not doing much of anything. The rent's going to be due soon, are you able to pay it?"

When she didn't look at him, he sighed. "Lucy, you need to start figuring out what you're going to do from now on. Maybe you should go visit Wendy for a while, do some work with her. I'm sure she would love to have you. Or go find Gajeel and Levy, they offered to let you train with them. Erza might be able to tell you where to look for Grey or Natsu…or you could go to Yukino at Sabertooth. She told me to tell you that."

"I don't want to join another guild," Lucy said dully. "Fairy Tail is my family."

"Fairy Tail will always be your family," Loke said gently. "But you need to make sure that you're able to keep paying your rent. What will happen to you at the end of the month? Then you won't have a place to stay or a job. If you don't want to join another guild, why don't you join one of the others who are out training? Levy…"

His master turned on him. "I know what Levy said," she spat quietly, anger replacing the sadness in her eyes. "But I would only be in the way there. Without Fairy Tail, I have nowhere to go."

"If you don't want to find Levy and Gajeel, why don't you find Grey or Natsu?" Loke asked, glad that he was able to get a reaction from her, even if it was to make her angry.

"Grey's with Juvia in all likelihood, and it would be just like being with Levy and Gajeel." Lucy said, staring out the window. "And if Natsu wanted me to come with him, he would have…"

Loke could follow her train of thought, and see her shoulders trembling. "Why don't you go training on your own then," he suggested quickly, trying to keep her from sinking back into her tears. "Capricorn and I could help…"

"No," she snapped, turning on him. "Natsu told me to take care of Fairy Tail, and…"

"Fairy Tail is _gone_ Lucy," Loke shouted, losing control of his temper. "Your guildmates have scattered because they _had_ to. Without a guild, they don't have a way to make a living. You need to do the same. Staying in Magnolia is not an option any longer. I understand that you don't want to join another guild. But at least let Capricorn and I train you…"

"I won't," she whispered coldly, and Loke was surprised to see such a frigid expression on her face. "If you want me to leave, I'll leave, okay! But after I'm done packing here, I _will not_ summon any of you until I am ready."

Gaping at her, Loke said: "What are you going to do?" he asked.

"I don't know," Lucy admitted, "but until I am confident that I can protect you, I won't risk summoning you again."

Her words hit Loke like a stone. "Lucy, are you blaming yourself over what happened to Aquarius?" he said, understanding a bit more of what she was feeling.

She turned away from him again, but he could read the answer in her shoulders. "Lucy, that's not how this works. You did everything you could do. Hell, you did more than any Stellar Spirit mage _ever_ has! Summoning the Spirit King was the only way that you could have survived. By summoning him, you saved your guildmates. Aquarius knew what the cost was and was willing to do it anyway, otherwise she wouldn't have told you about it. She doesn't blame you at all."

"There is no way I will ever sacrifice my friends ever again," Lucy whispered. "If I must leave Magnolia, I must. But I will not summon you until I am able to protect you. That is my promise to you. Now, leave before I force close your gate. Please tell Virgo that I will summon her in the morning and ask that she store my things until I find a new place to stay." Her voice had grown in strength until it had reached her usual commanding tones, which encouraged Loke slightly, even though he had his doubts about her plan. The lion spirit could understand that the loss of her first spirit had taken its toll on her, but he didn't think that she was going about it the right way. But whatever shook her out of the apathy she had fallen into since the guild had been disbanded was okay with him, as long as it wasn't self-destructive.

"I will agree to that," he said, standing and bowing formally. "But I do reserve the right to open my own gate if you do not leave as you have planned. Please understand, I only say this both because you are my nakama and because I have sworn to protect you. Sometimes that includes protecting your from yourself."

The Celestial Spirit mage gave no response, and he sighed and closed his gate. Alone in her apartment, Lucy considered hiding under her covers again, but she knew that her lion was as strict about his promises as she was. Letting out her own sigh, she stood up and began to prepare her apartment for packing. She had said that she would leave in the morning, and now she must keep that promise.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three:**

The landlady put her hands on her hips. "Are you telling me that you're going off for another seven years again?" she demanded angrily. "I can't just let this room sit here. How do you intend to pay your rent?"

Lucy held her hands up in a feeble defense. "No, you don't understand. I came today to tell you that at the end of the month, I won't be able to pay my rent anymore, so I'm leaving. The apartment's all cleaned out and in good shape, and you can keep the rent money for this month. I'm sure you'll be able to find another tenant soon enough. I'm sorry that I couldn't give you more notice, but the guild…"

"It's always the guild with you people," the landlady muttered, accepting the key that Lucy held out to her. "Last time, you just up and disappeared for seven years without any warning at all…where were you that time again?"

"Tenrou Island," Lucy murmured, seeing flashes of the ruined S-Class trials in her mind.

"Sounds like a dreadful place…_I've_ never even heard of it, so it can't be all that popular." The landlady tucked the key into her pocket. "What are you going to do now?"

"I'll probably travel for a bit," Lucy said, still having no idea what her plans were. "After that, I don't know."

"Well, if you come back to Magnolia and need a room, you come here first." Her eyes looked suspiciously bright as she studied Lucy. "For a mage, you're not a bad tenant."

"I'll keep that in mind," Lucy said vaguely, waving as she walked away. Her feet brought her to the train station, and she wondered where she would go. As she had told Leo, she had no intention of joining another guild or trying to track down the wandering members of her guild. Sitting on the bench outside the ticket office, she wondered how long it had been since she last was without a guild.

"Not since I met Natsu in Hargeon," she murmured, realizing how long it had truly been, especially if she counted the seven year timeskip caused by Tenrou Island and the S-Class Promotion trials.

For a moment, she stopped breathing. _Tenrou_. Fairy Tail's holy ground. Maybe Mavis would be able to shelter her there for a while so she could figure out how she could train herself to become stronger. And she would be honoring her promise to Natsu: she would watch over the guild, or what was left of it.

Filled with purpose for the first time since before Tartaros, Lucy stood and bought a ticket to Hargeon.

* * *

><p>Standing on the deck of the ship, wishing that she had packed lighter clothes, Lucy studied the sea in front of her. All around her was open water, with no Tenrou in sight. She sighed, wondering what she would do. Normally, only Fairy Tail members could see the island, and she wondered if the presence of non-members on the ship she had taken was preventing the island from becoming visible.<p>

"Hey, mage." The voice from behind made her turn, and she saw the ship's captain walking towards her. "You'll have to decide whether or not you're going to stay or go. We can't stay out here much longer unless you've got more money."

With a grimace, Lucy replied: "No, that was the last I had. Can you just leave me out here in a rowboat or something?"

The captain looked at her curiously. "You want me to leave you out in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight in a _rowboat_?"

Lucy sighed. When he put it that way, she did indeed sound crazy. "It's mage stuff. I can't really explain, but there's an island out here. Only certain people can see it though, and I think that's why it's not appearing."

"How do you know that you can see it?" the captain asked gruffly. "For all you know, this island is a myth."

Turning back to the rail, Lucy looked out over the sea, searching for a glance of Tenrou Island. "It's not a myth."

"And how do you know that?"

"I spent seven years there," she whispered, hearing him walk away and call for the hands to prepare a rowboat.

* * *

><p>Laxus jogged slowly across the sands, panting as he tried to keep his balance while his feet slid as the sand shifted. Why Mavis had insisted on his morning run being along the beach, he didn't know, but he knew that when she ordered him to do something, he better jump to it. It still astonished him that someone so innocent looking could be so scary.<p>

When he almost fell for the umpteenth time, he moved closer to the water, where the sand was firmer underfoot. Every so often a wave would tickle his feet, and the coolness would refresh him. But when he stubbed his toe on a piece of driftwood, he swore.

_Wait_, he thought. _Driftwood?_ He had never seen driftwood on Tenrou before. Typically ships didn't come out this far, or if they did, they never wrecked. Stubbed toe forgotten, he sped up, following a trail of wreckage down the beach.

A human form lay half covered in sand in the midst of the shattered remains of a small boat. Worried, Laxus shifted the destroyed wood and started to brush the sand away. Under his touch, the body stirred, and he realized that he recognized the blond hair, brighter than the sand mixed with it.

"Lucy?" he breathed, his hands working furiously to uncover the girl. "What…"

Coughing, she opened her eyes. "Mavis?" she whispered, her voice hoarse.

Scooping her up in his arms, Laxus moved off towards Mavis's grave. She wouldn't punish him for abandoning the rest of his morning workout. Lucy needed the attention more.

"You found her then," Mavis's voice came from the edge of the trees, causing Laxus to stop, Lucy lying unresponsive in his arms.

"What?" Laxus asked. "Did you know that she was there, and that's why you told me to run on the beach this morning?" Now that the initial shock had worn off, he was wondering why he felt so concerned for this girl, albeit one of his precious nakama.

The First Master just smiled faintly. "Come on," she said, turning back towards the interior of the island. "She will be all right when she rests a bit."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four:**

When Lucy woke up, she found herself lying on a cot inside a tent. Slowly sitting up, she felt her body protest and memories of what had transpired began to filter back to her. She remembered the ship she had taken, and not being able to see the island. How she had asked the captain to leave her there in the rowboat. The storm that had come up not long after the boat was a speck in the distance.

Lucy remembered the waves crashing against her tiny boat as she tried to hold on to the sides, grateful for her backpack, which had a water repellant spell on it, and praying for the island to become visible.

At the very last moment she could remember, the island had appeared, but before she could do anything else, the boat came apart and a piece hit her head, and all that she remembered was blackness.

After a few moments of sitting up on the cot and making sure nothing was broken, she looked around curiously. Her backpack was sitting at the foot of the bed, and it looked undisturbed, and more importantly, undamaged. Most of the other items in the tent were generic, or hidden in the footlocker that her backpack was placed on. The only personal item was a long grey coat.

Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she tested her balance. Glad to find out that nothing was broken, although it did hurt, she stood up slowly, grimacing as the salt dried on her skin cracked and flaked. Hopefully whoever had put her here didn't mind having salt in their bed.

Pushing open the flap of the tent, she realized it was late afternoon. She must have slept through the day. Briefly she remembered the feeling of someone's arms around her, but nothing specific that would help her place where she was or who had found her.

Outside the tent, she found herself in a small clearing. A small stone monument stood at one end of the clearing, newly cleared of vines, and opposite it was a campfire. Standing there, Lucy realized that she had made it to Tenrou. But she wasn't alone.

Her first thought had been that Loke had disobeyed her direct order, but she didn't feel his presence outside of the spirit world. As her fingers brushed against the empty space on her belt, she remembered that she had placed her keys in her backpack in an effort to prevent them from summoning themselves. So, if it hadn't been a spirit, she wondered, who had made camp on Tenrou?

A shape loomed up out of the shadows cast by the surrounding trees, making her jump. Instinctively, her hand went for her keys, and her mouth opened to recite the familiar summoning, but she snapped it shut and detached her whip, sending it snaking out in front of her, ashamed of her reliance on her spirits.

The shape moved forward, and came into the firelight, and she realized that she recognized the person. "Laxus?" she breathed, taking in his bulky frame and lightning shaped scar.

He grunted as he set down the load of wood he was carrying. "So you're finally awake Blondie. Wondered how long you'd be out."

Sitting down on one of the logs near the fire, he rolled his shoulders as if they were stiff. Lucy was distracted from his presence by the appearance of Mavis, who nodded at her. "Welcome back to Tenrou, Lucy Heartfilia."

"Thank you," Lucy coiled her whip and returned it to her belt as she watched Mavis perch daintily on another of the logs that surrounded the fire pit.

"Yo, Blondie," Laxus grunted, causing her to turn back towards him. "What happened to your boat?"

She frowned at him, but said: "There was a storm. I couldn't see Tenrou until it was in full rage. A wave capsized me, and I guess I'm lucky I ended up on the shore."

"Oh," he said, tossing another branch on the fire. "I thought your spirit was causing trouble again. You know, that fish one?"

"Mermaid," she corrected automatically. "No, it was a storm. Aquarius…Aquarius had nothing to do with it." Lucy was proud of herself. Her voice only trembled slightly when she said her former spirit's name.

"Did Gramps send you here?" Laxus asked, reaching for a metal grate which he balanced over two strategically placed rocks. "You can tell him I'm not going back until I'm completely ready." He growled lowly.

"No, Master didn't send me here at all." Lucy said sadly, wondering how he hadn't known. "Laxus…he disbanded Fairy Tail."

The blonde in front of her gaped in shock. Some distant part of Lucy realized that this was probably a rare moment that should be remembered, but most of her efforts went towards maintaining her demeanor.

"What? When did he do that? Why didn't you say so earlier." Laxus snapped, looking at Mavis. "How come you didn't tell me, First?"

"Your grandfather disbanded the guild two weeks ago. I thought you knew." The First's reply was nonchalant. She kicked her feet absently as she continued. "I didn't mind you staying here though. It's always nice to have company."

Lucy stared at Laxus. "How come you didn't notice your guild symbol was gone?" she asked, confused at how he had been able to remain oblivious for the past two weeks. The loss of her own had felt like a gaping hole.

"It's still there, see…" Laxus pulled up the hem of his shirt to display a large design which Lucy vaguely remembered. He looked down at his chest and he whistled. "Shit. When did that happen?"

"How could you not realize…?" Lucy asked, her mind jumping to several conclusions, some of them less pleasant than others.

Laxus glared at her, the panic gone. "Don't look at me like that, Blondie. I swim every day. I guess I just didn't notice it when my guild stamp went missing. Anyway, what happened? Start explaining."

"I don't know," Lucy said, staring into the fire instead of looking him in the face. "He didn't give a reason, and disappeared not long after. Nobody was able to find him."

"Damn," Laxus said. "What did everyone do? I bet you Natsu nearly destroyed half the town." He chuckled grimly, stirring up the fire. "Gramps has got to be glad he's no longer responsible for that idiot."

"Natsu…was already gone," said Lucy, striving to keep her voice from trembling. "He left on a training trip. I got his note just before I found out. Grey and Juvia were gone too." Her arms instinctively wrapped around her torso, trying to keep her body from shaking with suppressed sobs.

"What happened to Ever, Freed, and Bix? Or Erza, Mira, Cana, Wendy, and Gajeel."

Taking a deep breath, Lucy said: "The Raijinshu left to train on their own. Erza went with Doranbolt to the magic council to deal with any dark guilds that pop up. Gajeel and Levy went on a training journey. Charle took Wendy to Lamia Scale to train with Chelia, and Mira and her siblings went to look for Master. Cana went to Quatro Cerebrus. I stayed in Magnolia until two days ago, hoping someone would come back, but nobody did. Everyone else either left to train or joined other guilds."

Letting out a low whistle, Laxus stared into the fire himself. "Why did you come here then? You should have gone with Wendy or Erza, or your bookworm friend. Mira wouldn't have minded you going with her either. She's always been too nice since that thing with Lisanna. And someone should have gone with Cana to keep her out of trouble. If you couldn't find anywhere else to go, you could have gone to see that Celestial mage in Sabertooth."

"Natsu told me to take care of the guild," Lucy said. It had become her mantra in the past two weeks, the reason why she had gotten up during the days in the hopes that they would come back. "Tenrou is the last place where the guild, or at least the memory of it, exists."

Mavis nodded. "This island will always be home to Fairy Tail, as long as my spirit remains. Lucy, you are welcome to stay as long as you like."

"Thank you Master Mavis," Lucy said gratefully, sitting on one of the logs. "Why are you here Laxus?"

The dragon slayer looked pensive, staring into the flames. "I want to train," he said curtly, after a long silence. "I…I figured Mavis and Tenrou would be my best bet to get stronger. So as soon as that human-hating old hag let me out of the infirmary, I came straight here. Mavis has been working me hard ever since."

"I can understand that," Lucy murmured so softly he almost couldn't hear it, touching the empty spot on her belt where her keys used to hang. "I understand that completely."

"Where are your keys Blondie?" Laxus asked suddenly. "I looked all over the beach for them, but I couldn't find them. Aren't you supposed to take better care of them?"

Biting her lip, Lucy refused to look at him. "They're in my backpack."

"Don't you normally carry them on your belt so you can reach them in a hurry?" At Mavis's inquisitive look, Laxus held up his hands. "Freed went on a Celestial magic research kick a while back. He always feels as if he has to share what he learns with all of us. Bix was actually interested in this tangent, which made it even longer than it usually was. Plus he had drawn up a list of potential weaknesses to exploit in Celestial mages, since the Saber girl was in the Grand Magic Games."

"I'm not using my keys right now," Lucy said flatly. "I don't want Leo to think he can just jaunt in and out whenever he wants, so I put the keys in my bag." At Laxus's confused look, she added: "Leo is the proper name for Loke."

Laxus still looked confused, but Mavis nodded in understanding. "What's your plan then," the First asked, her eyes sparkling. "How do you plan to spend your time on Tenrou?"

"Training," Lucy said softly. "I'm going to be stronger so I don't have to depend on my spirits any more. Next time, I'm…" _I'm not going to force my friend to sacrifice herself to save me next time_.

Mavis studied her. "So you're not going to summon your Celestial spirits any more?" she probed inquisitively.

"No." Her flat tone drew Laxus's eyes, but she didn't notice as she continued. "I have my Fleuve d'etoiles, and I can learn to fight with my own two hands. For the time being, I will not summon any Celestial Spirits."

"As you wish," Mavis said. "I hope you'll allow me to assist where I am able?"

"Of course, Master Mavis," Lucy said respectfully. "Your assistance would be very much appreciated."

"Why aren't you using your spirits?" Laxus burst out. "Aren't they your main strength? Not using them makes you useless."

"I will not use my spirits as a shield…" Lucy began angrily, but Laxus cut her off. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. All of Fairy Tail gets it. But without them, how do you expect to fight?"

_No more_. _I will not ask them to give any more of their strength to me_. Lucy thought, tears rising up in her eyes. "I don't know," she spat out, hiding her sadness with anger. "But I'll figure it out, just like everyone else has. Why should I be the exception?"

He still looked confused as he watched her. Mavis studied the both of them carefully, before saying: "I've come up with a good plan."

Both heads swiveled towards the girl. "What is your plan, Master Mavis?" Lucy said.

She clapped her hands together definitively. "Lucy, I'm putting Laxus in charge of you and your training. I'll take charge of Laxus's, and we'll all do quite well, I think."

"First," Laxus snapped, rising from his seat on the log. "How is that going to…"

"Oh hush," Mavis flapped her hand at him. "You have certain goals, right?"

Starting to protest again, she silenced him with another wave of her hand. "Think of this as a real world experience. You wanted to be strong enough to protect people, right?"

"Well, yeah," he said, looking sheepish.

"Then she's your first subject." Mavis said, shutting down any other arguments. "Effective now."

"Hey, does anyone care what _I_ want?" Lucy snapped. "I'm not a damsel in distress to be protected. I want to _protect_."

"Hush," Mavis said. "Part of learning how to protect people is equipping them with the skills they need to protect themselves. Nobody's always around when someone needs their help. Teaching them how to defend themselves may save their lives more often than actually being present. Give him a chance."

"All right," Lucy mumbled skeptically, looking at the lightning dragon slayer who was scowling into the fire. "I'll give him a chance."

"First, can we talk for a minute?" Laxus growled. "Privately?"

The first master of Fairy Tail shrugged and said: "Fine, if that's what you wish. Lucy, please excuse us."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five:**

"What are you doing, First?" Laxus growled, once they were far enough into the forest so Lucy couldn't hear them.

"I'm giving you the education you wanted, right?" Mavis said, inspecting her nails. "You did want to be able to protect people you care about, right?"

"Well, yes, but…" Laxus started, but Mavis continued.

"And you wanted to be able to be a candidate for guild master, when your grandfather retired, right?"

"Yes, but…"

"Do you agree that one of the responsibilities of a guild master is to teach his nakama?"

"Yes…" Laxus had given up trying to get any other word in except agreement.

"With that in mind, do you consider Lucy one of your nakama?"

"Yes…"

"Should a guild master be able to provide for and shelter his nakama?"

"Yes."

"I don't see what you're complaining about. One of your nakama showed up on your doorstep with no place to go, no way to provide for herself, and looking for instruction. You want to be able to guide, protect, and provide for your nakama, and that takes practice. Very few people are born able to do that just off the bat. Most humans have to practice. And now Lucy's here, and I think it's a great opportunity for her to become stronger and you to learn how to be a capable guild master."

"How can I train her if she refuses to use her magic?" Laxus growled.

Mavis arched an eyebrow at him. "I didn't hear her refusing to use her magic," the first master said. "She said that she wouldn't use her keys."

"That's the same though. A Celestial mage's strength lies in the keys they wield." Laxus said, confused.

"And what is a Celestial mage's greatest weakness?" Mavis asked.

"The keys," Laxus replied. "If you can separate the mage from her keys, her summoning capability will be reduced."

"Why would Lucy refuse to use her keys then?"

"I don't know," Laxus complained, following Mavis back towards their camp. "She's being foolish."

"Part of being a guild master is being able to figure out what's happening underneath the exterior." Mavis said cryptically. "But you should focus on her immediate needs first, before you worry about her fighting skills."

"Her immediate what? Mavis!" Laxus resisted the urge to bellow as the spirit disappeared, leaving him alone, just outside the camp. Overhead, the darkness was growing deeper, and he was beginning to feel hungry. From where he stood, he could see Lucy sitting on her log, staring resolutely into the fire as if she was hoping to see something in it. Remembering Mavis's comment about _underneath the exterior_, he studied her more closely, looking for a sign of what the First had seen.

His first thought was that she looked crusty, and then he remembered that he had scooped her up out of the sand and seawater and never done anything else to clean her up. She needed a bath and clean clothes. He could deal with that.

"Yo, Blondie," he said, stepping back into the firelight. "It's me, chill out." She had reached for her whip again. "There's a spring not too far from here, about fifty feet from the tent, but it's concealed by trees and shrubs. I promise to stay here, and there's nothing out there that will hurt you, if you want to go take a bath."

The girl nodded, and went into the tent for her bag before starting to creep nervously through the trees. Sitting on the log he had previously occupied, Laxus thought: _Well, that's one thing taken care of._

A rumbling from his stomach made him pause. It was about time for him to make dinner. Lucy had to be starving. She hadn't eaten since the day before, if her story wasn't missing any days. Going into the tent, he rummaged on the shelves until he found enough food for two, hoping that she would be satisfied with campfire food, since that was the only food he knew how to make in this situation.

When she came back, he was nearly done with the cooking. He smelled her first, the tang of sea water replaced by the faint scent of strawberries. When he heard her come into the clearing, he called out: "There are plates and cups in the tent on the shelves. Bring out enough for both of us. If you wouldn't mind." He hastened to add, lest it seem as if he was ordering her around.

He heard her pull aside the tent flap, and realized that having her around would be a bigger problem than he had expected. When he had packed for his trip to Tenrou, he had only brought one tent and one cot. Hopefully she had brought her own bedding with her, but the tent situation would be difficult. Casting a glance at the sky, he was glad to see that it wouldn't rain. While he was visually inspecting the ground of the clearing to see which prospect offered the fewest roots, she came back out of the tent, plates and cups in her hand.

"I didn't know what silverware to get," she said as she approached, looking less grungy than she had before. "What did you make?"

"Paella." Laxus said. "Forks would be best. I'll get the drinks."

While she went back into the tent for the forks, Laxus moved towards Mavis's grave and past it, to a tiny spring that bubbled forth clear, cool water. Filling their cups, he walked back to the fire as Lucy returned. Dividing the paella between them, he began eating, hungry after a long day of training under Mavis. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched his companion, trying to follow his instructions to look beyond what she was telling him.

The blonde celestial mage picked at her food, mainly just pushing it around on her plate. She would reach down to her belt every so often, as if she was looking for something that wasn't there. Occasionally, she would bite her lip and stare into the fire.

"You should eat," he said gruffly, throwing another stick onto the fire. "You haven't had any food today."

"Oh," she said, her voice soft. "I guess I'm just not that hungry."

"Look here," Laxus ordered, focusing her attention on him. "None of this dieting crap that women do. If you're gonna be here, and I'm gonna train you, you're going to eat. There's no room for passing out from hunger on Tenrou, or in a fight. So you're going to finish your plate without complaints. Do you understand?"

She nodded mutely and raised her fork to her mouth. Laxus leaned back against the log he had been sitting on and took a sip of his water. Not for the first time since coming to Tenrou, he missed the bar at Fairy Tail. But maybe not drinking alcohol would help make him stronger. It was worth a try though.

When she was done, he took her plate and washed it quickly before putting the dishes back on the shelf in his tent. She was still sitting by the fire, looking into it with a closed expression. Sighing, Laxus wondered what he was going to do with her.

"Oi, Blondie?" he said, trying to keep from startling her as he came back from the tent. Night had fallen completely, making the small campsite difficult to see.

She still jumped, and he sighed again. "Just me. Anyway, do you have a blanket or something?"

Turning back to the fire, she nodded. Trying valiantly to sound caring, Laxus replied: "I'm going to take my bedroll off the cot and sleep out here tonight. You can use the tent. It's time to sleep, because training starts at dawn tomorrow. If you're not awake, I'm coming in to wake you up. Got that?"

Lucy nodded again, and got up and followed him to the tent. As he illuminated the small space with his lightning, Laxus could feel her watching him, but he ignored her and set about collecting his bedding. Thankfully it was reasonably warm on Tenrou year round, so he didn't have to worry about getting cold at night.

With the bedding in his arms, he moved towards the entrance of the tent. "The light will stay for five minutes," he said sternly. "Do whatever you need to do and be in bed by then, or I'm not responsible for whatever you end up doing to yourself."

Once he was back at the fire, he spread his blankets out and looked back towards the tent. He could see her silhouette against the tent wall, but his lightning was too dim to make out any of the finer details. Realizing that he had just signed himself up to live with a girl for an indeterminate period of time, Laxus groaned. This was not what he had in mind when he came to Mavis for training.

Right on cue, the light in the tent disappeared, and he heard no further noise from her direction. Supposedly she had managed to do whatever she needed in his time limit. Shifting in his blankets to find a more comfortable position, Laxus settled down to sleep, knowing from experience that Mavis was going to run him ragged in the morning.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six:**

The pale glow of the morning sun woke Laxus, and he stretched, trying to work out the kinks in his muscles. All night, there had been that one root, right under his lower back…grimacing, he hoped that Mavis would give him some time to soak in the hot springs later on.

Sitting up, he looked around for the First's spirit. Not seeing her childish form anywhere around the camp, he figured that he was on his own for the morning workouts. She kept a pretty stable routine for him in that aspect. It was the afternoon that she liked to vary.

Remembering the blonde in his tent, he realized that he would have to come up with a plan for her if Mavis wasn't around. Sighing, he shook off his blankets, stood up, and packed them up as neatly as possible. Carrying the bundle into the tent, he dropped them on the foot locker as loudly as possible, which was unfortunately too soft. The celestial mage slumbered on, curled up in a ball under her blanket. Rolling his eyes, Laxus reached out and tugged the blanket off her in one quick swoop.

"Shit, Blondie!"

He wasn't sure if it was the blanket being removed, or his startled exclamation that woke her, but in a flash she was awake and reaching for her whip before she realized who was in the tent with her.

"Get out!" she snapped, snatching the blanket away from him huffily. Laxus was pleased to oblige, moving quickly out of the tent.

When he was safely outside, he let out the breath he didn't know he was holding. Did girls always sleep in that little clothing? He had been surprised when he pulled the blanket off, seeing that much of her skin…what had he expected though? It wasn't as if he slept in anything more than a pair of shorts. Even though he had Ever around, he wasn't used to anything remotely girlish.

_It was a nice view though_, some part of his mind commented, but he set it aside and went to splash cold water on his face.

Returning to the main part of the clearing, he found Lucy standing outside the tent, dressed for training and looking a bit pink around the edges. Seeing him, she snapped: "Don't you ever do that again!"

With a roll of his eyes, he moved past her, heading for the trail out of the clearing. "Wouldn't want to anyway. I told you that I would be coming in to wake you up if you didn't get up in time. It's not my fault you didn't listen."

She huffed irritably at him but before she could say anything else, he said: "Your training starts now. We're going to run until I say we stop, and then we do a couple of other things to work on your conditioning and strength. After that, we break for lunch, and then we'll do something different in the afternoon." Hopefully Mavis would return by then and he wouldn't have to figure out what to do with the blonde all by himself. If she would only use her keys, she might stand a chance, but without them she was practically useless.

Thankfully, Lucy didn't argue about the morning training yet. Without another word, she started off jogging down the trail, and he followed, pacing himself to match her and trying to get a sense for what level she was at. Tomorrow, he'd make her run at his level, but for now, he needed to figure out where she was currently.

As they ran, he realized that it was like being with Cana and Mira, when they trained together for the Grand Magic Games. It was a lot quieter though, since Lucy wasn't being extraordinarily chipper like Mira, or complaining about having to leave her alcohol behind like Cana. The blonde just ran, her arms pumping, head up, breathing through her nose, and feet thrumming the ground. Her pace wasn't bad, he realized, finding it comfortable to run at without being overly slow. She would probably meet his pace soon enough. For a moment, he contemplated trying to push the pace and see how she reacted, but he knew that before anything else, he needed to test her limits. Right now, they would use her pace, and see how far she could go.

It was an hour later before he called a halt. "Nice work Blondie," he said grudgingly, taking a deep breath. Their run hadn't winded him, but the length of it was starting to put a strain on him, and her steps were beginning to falter. "Didn't think you would know how to run."

She shrugged, not caring that other people might have taken what he said as an insult. "You learn to keep up when Erza is leading off. And Natsu bugs enough people that running away is important. Eventually, I got tired of being left in the dust and I started running."

Laxus felt a grin creeping up on him. "Running away, hmm?" he said, taking in the blonde's appearance. She _looked_ fresh right now, but he knew that she had begun to falter while running. "Okay, next task starts now. If you can overtake me, we stop. If you can't, you keep running until I tell you to." He gave her a few seconds to comprehend it, and then took off from a standing start. "Come on Blondie, or eat my dust!"

He started off at a full sprint, his ears picking up her annoyed huff as she ran after him, but she was tired, and he was still mostly fresh. It was a grossly unfair situation. _She'll just have to deal with it then_, Laxus snickered, chancing a glance over his shoulder. _Yep, she's lagging_.

After a little bit, he let his pace drop to a run, a bit faster than his typical endurance pace, but she didn't gain much ground, so he had to drop to his normal pace, which helped her out quite often. Now she looked exhausted, but she wasn't giving up. _You have to admire her guts_, he thought. _I figured that she'd be like Ever, complaining by now, but she takes it almost as well as Freed does_.

While he may act like an arrogant jerk most of the time, he conceded to admit, he did give recognition where it was deserved.

A flash of blonde out of the corner of his eye snapped him out of his thoughts, and he realized that he had let his pace slacken slightly and she had made one final sprint to get past him. With a wry smile begging to be released, he looked at her where she lay collapsed on the ground. "On your feet Blondie."

The Celestial mage twitched, but didn't move. Sighing, he walked up to her, grabbed her by the arm, and hauled her onto her feet. "Don't lie down after running. You'll feel worse. Get up and keep moving until I give you your next task."

Lucy stumbled about while Laxus checked his watch. They had some time left before the lunch and rest break. He looked at the trees around him and grinned.

"Oi, Blondie, pick a tree and start climbing. You can rest when you reach the top or I tell you to come down." Her groan was audible, but she sized up the nearby trees and grabbed a low hanging branch. Satisfied that she was on her way up, Laxus started the strength portion of his workouts: pushups, crunches, pull ups, and a few other bodyweight exercises. It was a routine he had been doing for years, and it had served him well. If he thought Lucy wouldn't outright rebel, he would make her do it too, but he didn't want to break her on the first day.

When he was done with his routine, he looked up into the trees above him, looking for her. He finally found her halfway up the tallest tree of the bunch. "Oi, Blondie, get down from there, or you won't get food."

She surprised him by swinging off the branch that she was currently grasping, and flipping onto another one. Her entire path down the tree was like one big acrobatic routine, and her flexibility impressed Laxus. To tell the truth, her entire performance that morning had shocked him. His recollection of Lucy Heartfilia was that of a soft, pampered princess, hiding behind Erza, Grey, and Natsu, but here she was, holding her own in a toned down version of his own personal workouts.

Reaching the ground, her hand slipped on the branch, but she tucked her body up and rolled as she hit the ground. Standing up, she began to trudge back along the path they had taken while running.

"Hey, Blondie?" When she turned to look quizzically at Laxus, he jerked his head in the opposite direction as she was heading. "Shortcut." Without another word, he began to walk on the faint trail on the forest floor, hearing the telltale signs of the celestial mage following him.

Lunch was another silent affair. Even when he spoke to her, Lucy answered few questions, but silently did what he asked of her. He didn't mind quiet, he actually preferred being left alone, but what memories of the blonde he had were usually of her chatting with Mira, or one of their former guild mates. This quiet Lucy was almost a stranger to him. If he hadn't seen her lying in a hospital bed, close to tears after the naval battle, he wouldn't believe it was actually her. It was a bit unnerving.

When he returned from cleaning their dishes and cleared his throat, she didn't look up at him. "Blondie," he said gruffly, still getting no response. "We're going to start again. Bring whatever you need to work on your magic."

As she got up, he noticed that her whip was already in its place on her hip, but her keys were still missing. Laxus led them to a large clearing that he had seen used in other S Class promotion trials and told her to stand in one place while he went to a spot about halfway across the clearing.

"Okay Blondie, here's the rules. No killing or maiming, since Wendy or that old hag aren't around to patch you up after this. If you are wounded, let me know and I'll decide whether or not to stop the fight. Other than that, this is an anything goes battle until someone either surrenders or is pinned. I'll try and take it easy on you."

At her nod, he studied her for a long moment. "Are you _sure_ you don't want your keys?"

Lucy shook her head, and Laxus sighed. "All right, but don't complain later when I wipe the floor with you. Ready? Go!"

She made the first move, her whip snaking across the grass towards him. He dodged it easily, taunting: "Nice try blondie, but I've seen that trick before. Try again!"

Her whip curved back towards him, and he noted that she could control its trajectory even when it was fully extended and in motion. This wasn't a normal whip then. Dodging for a few minutes, he got bored and started sending little bolts of lightning at her. She was able to dodge those, and he saw that her footwork was precise, not wasting a movement. Seeing that she was ready for a new challenge, he sent several bolts at her, too many for her to dodge.

Retracting her whip in a flash, she struck the lightning bolts away from her, deflecting several, and shattering the rest so that they fell in small sparks to the ground below. He could feel what she had done, and realized that her whip didn't actually _shatter_ the lightning, but its momentum was in so many directions that the lightning was deflected in such a way that it looked like she had shattered it. Impressed by her defense, Laxus sent more lightning at her, but retained control over it, pulling them aside when she tried to strike them away, and sending them at her while she was still arranging her defense. Unable to block or deflect, she dropped to the ground and rolled away, coming up on her feet in time to block the largest bolt that he had sent at her to this point. She just barely blocked it, holding her whip stretched between her hands like a staff, but it threw her off balance, so when Laxus rammed into her, she was knocked into the ground.

Throwing a punch, he dodged it and returned one of his own. They grappled for a few minutes before he managed to pin her down so that she wasn't able to move any more. Pausing, he studied her face, which he hadn't really looked at since she had shown up on the island.

Laxus wouldn't exactly call himself a student of human facial expressions but hers was certainly not normal. He had seen glimpses of it in Erza's face when she was new to the guild, and in Cana's whenever Gildarts had come and gone again without noticing her. Once in a while, he saw it in Grey's eyes, when he would come to the guild at night, jaw clenched and aching for a fight. And he had seen it in Mira and Elfman after they had buried the Edolas Lisanna. But Lucy's face surpassed them all.

It was only her eyes that drew him in. They were so empty, devoid of anything. Looking into them was like looking into a deep pit with no bottom…it startled and unnerved him. The little that he knew of her, she had always seemed bright, and smiling. Sure, she had cried a bit during the Grand Magic Games, but she had returned to the stands, cheering louder than anyone else in the Fairy Tail cheering section. One or two people had referred to her as one of the lights of Fairy Tail, and he could easily see that. People like her and Mira, and to an extent Cana, Wendy, and Levy, they made Fairy Tail as warm as it was. But the Lucy he saw right now…her eyes were like those of a dead person.

Turning her head, she broke the eye contact and looked away.

Unnerved, Laxus remembered that he still had her pinned and quickly freed her, standing up and giving her some space. The celestial mage made no movement other than to put her arm over her eyes.

Taking a seat a short distance away, Laxus tried to figure out what had happened. They had just been sparring, that was all. It hadn't even been a very long or very difficult spar in his opinion. But there she was, looking so empty that it was painful to see, even for someone who didn't know her very well. Watching her, he groped for some clue in the few memories he had of the Tartaros battle. She hadn't been like this before the battle, had she?

Unfortunately, most of his knowledge was third-hand, from Freed, who had been talking with Mira. The stories he had heard were mostly about Natsu and his dragon, and Erza and the demon fight. There were hints that suggested Grey had reached some new level, but nothing definite. Nobody really said very much about how Lucy had fought during the Tartaros battle, but one of the stories suggested that she might have been responsible for freeing the guild from the Cube, but nobody knew how.

Looking at the girl in front of her, he wondered what had brought her to Tenrou. She had said that she came to train, and that she chose Tenrou because of the Fairy Tail connection, but why did she want to train? He had come because he had failed to protect Freed, Ever, and Bix, and he never wanted to let them get hurt. _Maybe if I had been at the main battle with Tartaros too, the others might not have been hurt as much. Maybe if I had been stronger, I could have stopped at least some of it_. The dead villagers also weighed on his mind. There had to have been some way that he could have saved them.

A voice spoke quietly from behind him. "Take a walk with me Laxus." Not startled by her sudden appearance, since she had been doing that for quite a while, the lightning dragon slayer stood and followed Mavis into the woods.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven:**

When they could still see Lucy, but she would be too far away to hear them, Mavis stopped. Perching herself on a tree stump, she motioned for him to sit as well. Laxus sat down opposite her and looked up at the tiny figure of the First master of Fairy Tail. "What happened to you First? You were gone all morning. I have no idea what to do with her." He tried not to whine, but it came somewhat close.

Waving her hand, Mavis said: "The point of me not being here was to give you time to train her. Remember this was supposed to be a learning experience."

With a grunt, Laxus said: "If I can't figure her out, how am I supposed to train her? What happened to her, First?" His tone turned serious, as he remembered the look on her face at the end of their spar.

Mavis shrugged. "I was hoping you knew. You know that I wasn't at the battle against Tartarus. Didn't you ask around while you were still with Fairy Tail?"

Laxus scowled at her. "Of course I did. Freed told me all he knew, and he talked with Mira, who was there. He didn't have anything to say about Lucy though, it was mainly Erza, Natsu, and Grey that he talked about. Oh, and the twin dragons from Sabertooth and their young lady."

The spirit hummed, tapping one finger on her chin. "So if something happened, nobody knows about it."

"I wish she would just use her keys," Laxus said bitterly. "That spar was a joke. She had no chance. There are no spells at all in her inventory, just her whip, and that's easy enough to avoid. Her melee combat skills are nonexistent, and she'll never be able to take a guy my size. You told me to teach her, but I don't know how to without her keys. If only she would keep her keys near her, Loke might show up and I could maybe get some answers."

Mavis clucked disapprovingly. "Do you know one of the best and worst characteristics of Celestial Spirit mages?"

He was dumbfounded. "What does that have to do with anything First? Stop asking me questions when you know I don't know the answer."

"Oh, it would make you think twice about wishing that one of her spirits would show up." Mavis said. "A Celestial Sprit mage holds promises in very high regard. Once they give their word, they will never go back on it. It stems from the contracts they form with their spirits, which are only breakable by the death or imprisonment of their master. Lucy in particular, I believe, has proven that she will never break a promise, no matter what the personal cost. And as to me asking you questions, I specialize in _strategy_, not omniscience."

"You've lost me First. I still don't know what this has to do with me getting answers if Loke should show up." Laxus couldn't tell where this was going.

Sighing, Mavis explained. "If Lucy does her best to honor and respect the promises and bonds between her and her spirits, it is very likely that they do the same. So even if her lion appears, he would likely be obeying a direct order already. I'm sure he would have his own reasons for doing so, reasons important enough to make him break his own promise, but I doubt that he would betray her confidence so much as to explain what is going on. All spirits have a very personal link with their master, especially one who loves and respects them so much as Lucy. None of them would do anything that might hurt her unless they had a very good reason."

Laxus's head dropped into his hands as he groaned. "First, I just don't know what to do. She doesn't say a word to me that she doesn't have to, no matter what I tell her to do. All morning we train and she seems fine, except for physical exhaustion anyway. But we spar, and she just gets this look in her eyes…I've never seen a person _look_ at me like that, as if she didn't see anything at all. You told me to take care of her like a guild master, but I don't know what to do. Sure, I can train her body, but I can't train her magic at all. I'm a caster mage, not a holder mage, so she won't be able to learn anything that I know. Then there's just…her…I don't know how to put it, but something just doesn't seem right about her. And I don't know how to figure out what or even how to fix it."

Briefly Mavis studied the young man in front of her and realized that he would eventually make a good guild leader, if a bit oblivious. He still had a lot to learn, but his heart was moving in the right direction. Perhaps whatever had brought Lucy to Tenrou would end up helping both of them to move forward. The Celestial mage's demeanor was bothering her as well. From her time spent with Fairy Tail, she had gotten a good sense of the girl's personality, and what she saw now was certainly atypical. Something had happened during the battle that had left its mark on Lucy.

"How could her team just go off when she was like this?" Laxus asked of his hands. "Natsu, Erza, Grey…they all know her better than I do. Why would they just walk away? They're some of the most sympathetic people in the guild."

Mavis looked unimpressed. "Natsu is one of the most oblivious people in the guild," she commented, but Laxus ignored her.

"Or Mira, Levy or Cana…Levy's one of her friends, right? And Cana must be too, or they wouldn't have been partners for the S Class exam. Mira's the kindest person in the guild too. How come any of them didn't see this and help her?" Laxus's voice was tinged with frustration as he ranted at Fairy Tail's founder.

"Natsu and Grey left not long after you did," a voice said, and Laxus and Mavis turned to see Loke appearing from a brief golden glow. "And she put more effort into trying to act normally when the others were around."

"Loke," Laxus said, feeling relieved to see the leader of the zodiacs. "What changed?"

"The guild disbanded," he said flatly, peering at Lucy through the trees, satisfying himself that she was still there. "Everyone left, and she was all alone again."

"Again?" Laxus repeated, but more pressing questions rose to his tongue. "What happened during the battle? Why won't she summon you guys? How are you able to be here?"

"I have the strength to open my own gate for a short period of time," Loke said quietly. "Previously I haven't done so because I had promised not to pass through unless called for. I thought it would help. But I needed to make sure that she was okay, and I knew you two were talking about her."

"But why won't she summon you? Did you see her fighting earlier? She doesn't have a chance without you." Laxus said, looking up at the lion. "Convince her to start using her magic again."

Lucy's strongest spirit shook his head sadly. "I cannot," he said, the pain evident in his voice. "Do you think we would stay away if we weren't strictly forbidden to come? She doesn't want…seeing me would do more damage than good. No, she needs the help of humans this time."

Laxus stared at him. "Are you kidding me? You're her best friends! I can't help her. Go find someone on team Natsu and get them if you won't help her yourself. Don't let her suffer like this!"

He found himself flat on his back with Loke on top of him, fist glowing inches from his face. The look of pain and anger on Loke's face was frightening. "Don't _ever_ think that I wouldn't help her if I could. Lucy is the only reason I am here right now. She saved my life and I swore that I would devote mine to protecting her. If there was anything I could do, including sending a member of team Natsu to her, I would do it in a heartbeat. But she made us promise to do nothing, and that's all we can do for her right now. It's hurting all of us as much as it's hurting her."

Unused to seeing emotion this deep in Loke, Laxus couldn't do anything but stare at the man seconds away from punching him in the face.

Suddenly, Loke's face blanched, and he scrambled off Laxus. "Oh stars, _no_." The lion whispered, turning to the clearing where Lucy had been. Laxus got up, and followed his gaze. Catching his arm, Loke cried: "You need to stop her, _right now_."

"Why, what's going on?" Laxus said, peering through the trees. Lucy was standing in the center of the clearing, arms outstretched. She was saying something, but he couldn't make out what.

"Let me put it this way: she doesn't have enough magic right now for that spell to go right. She's only cast it three times in her life, and each time she had someone else's magic to augment hers. If you don't stop her before she completes the incantation, then _bad things_ will happen. I can't stay any longer." He disappeared, leaving a dumbfounded Laxus behind and a grim Mavis.

Frozen, Laxus looked between the place where Loke had been standing and Lucy in the clearing, who had begun to glow. Suddenly, he remembered the only spell he had ever seen the blonde use, and started sprinting towards the clearing.


	8. Chapter 8

*****Please note that this storyline has DIVERGED from canon plot with the release of 418 this week! The standard disclaimer applies: I own nothing but the general plot of this story!**

**Also, thanks for all your interest in this story! It makes me so happy to know that you guys love it as much as I do! Please enjoy!*********

**Chapter Eight:**

Lucy raised her arms, feeling the magic swell inside her like it had in the Grand Magic Games, and again when she fought Jackal. But there was nobody to cancel her magic, and there was no tattoo on her skin. The thought made her throat feel tight, and she focused even harder on her magic.

_Survey the Heavens, Open the Heavens...  
>All the stars, far and wide...<br>Show me thy appearance...  
>With such shine.<br>Oh Tetrabiblos...  
>I am the ruler of the stars...<br>Aspect become complete...  
>Open thy malevolent gate.<br>Oh 88 Stars of the heaven... _

"LUCY!" she heard dimly, as she felt her magic begin to stutter, but she just pushed harder, trying to force even more magic out. _This_ time, she would succeed, and nobody would have to be sacrificed…

A flash of lightning burst in front of her, and she saw Laxus appear, an arm's length away. "_No_!" she cried, losing her grip on the magic. He was too close, he would get hit!

Panicking, she couldn't stop the spell, but there was nothing she could do but release the magic. "Get back!" she screamed, fear paralyzing her.

"Not until you stop!" he thundered, and she wanted to cry. In any minute, she would lose her hold on the magic and it would wipe out everything close to them. Summoning the last of her strength, she tried to force the magic away from herself, pulling at it, forcing it to strike somewhere else, somewhere far away from Laxus. Tugging desperately at the magic, she felt something _rip_, and for a moment, she felt as if she could see the spirit world. But then the magic roared, sensing her loss of control, and it poured through the rip.

Her vision was fading to black, but she fought to stay conscious until she saw the blazing light pouring out on the other side of the clearing, far away from Laxus, who was staring at her, looking frightened and confused. She wanted to reach out, make sure that he was okay, that she didn't hurt him, but everything was growing dark…

When she woke up, she was on the cot again. Sitting up, she immediately lay back down. Everything hurt, both physically and magically. Memories came rushing back to her, and she brought her arm up to cover her eyes. She had failed at casting her only spell. Even before Laxus had arrived and put himself in danger, she didn't have enough magic to finish casting it successfully. Her only hope at fighting without her keys was gone. Without something like Urano Metria, she wouldn't be able to protect her spirits.

The tent flap rustled, and someone came in. Without looking, she knew it had to be Laxus. Mavis or one of her spirits would have simply appeared inside.

"Lucy," he said, surprising her. He hadn't ever used her name before. "What the hell was that?"

"_Go away_," she whispered, turning away from him. She didn't want to talk to anyone. Maybe it was a good thing that the master had disbanded Fairy Tail before he had a chance to discover how weak she was and throw her out.

_You know Master would never do that_. She reminded herself. _It was Laxus who wanted to clear the guild of weaklings. Master stopped him, or would have if he hadn't gotten sick_.

"I can't do that Lucy. Something's wrong, and I'm not leaving until you tell me what the hell happened out there. Tell me all of it, or just some of it. Just explain what happened."

"Go _away_ Laxus," she hissed, squeezing her eyes tighter in an attempt to stop the tears from coming out. "I don't want to talk to you."

"Too bad." He said, and she could hear him sitting down on the footlocker at the foot of the bed. "Even the First is worried about you."

She felt bad for worrying the First, but she didn't want to admit her shame to the wizard who had created the guild she had considered family. It was why she didn't tell anyone about what had happened during the battle with Tartarus. Nobody could ever know how much she had failed.

"I know I'm not one of your friends," he continued, as if she hadn't told him to go away twice. "You might even hate me because of Fantasia. I get that. But I am a member of Fairy Tail, and I consider you my nakama…"

"Fairy Tail doesn't exist anymore." Lucy said dully.

"It exists as long as we still believe in it. This island is proof of it," Laxus said, and she could hear the frustration in his voice as he did. Why couldn't he understand that it wasn't a matter of _her_ hating him, but a matter of him hating _her_ once she found out what she had done?

"Just go away," she said tiredly. "I don't want to talk."

"No," he said flatly. "I can't in good conscious leave one of my nakama like this. Until you tell me at least a little bit of what's going on, I'm not going to leave this tent."

"Stop pretending like you care," she snapped, sitting upright, angry. "Just get the hell out of here and let me look after myself."

"You're right, until yesterday I didn't know all that much about you," he snapped back, sparks flickering around his fingers. "But you put yourself on this island, and Mavis put me in charge of you. So if being your nakama wasn't enough, I now have a vested interest in keeping you alive."

Lucy stared blankly at him. "Why did you think that I was going to die?"

"The spell you were using…" Laxus said. "You had to have known that you didn't have enough magic. All three times you've cast it, you had someone else's magic, along with your own."

Narrowing her eyes at him, she asked, in the coldest voice he had ever heard: "_And how did you know that bit of information_?"

Laxus gulped. He remembered what Mavis had said about promises between spirits and their masters, and he only knew that information because Loke had mentioned it…

"Don't even bother lying to me, I know who told you," Lucy said. Reaching for her bag, she pulled out her keys. "Open, Gate of the Lion, Leo!" she hissed, eyes flashing.

Loke appeared, his face set. "Lucy…" he began, but trailed off when he saw her face.

Her expression was downright murderous. "No human knows that I had only cast Urano Metria three times before. And no human would know the circumstances of the third time that spell was cast. Only one of my spirits or the Spirit King would know and I didn't see him showing up…" her voice trailed off, and she knew that she was about to cry. Lucy grasped Aquarius's key so hard she could feel the broken edge cutting into her skin.

"Lucy," Loke said earnestly, kneeling before her, face turned upwards. "You knew yourself that you probably didn't have enough magic to cast it on your own. Attempting the spell without Gemini was foolish. I had to warn someone…" he trailed off as the fury returned to her face.

"Because of your meddling, I nearly…I nearly…_nearly_…" her voice trailed off as she wrapped her arms around herself to keep the sobs from shaking her body as she fought to keep her fear and grief concealed from Laxus, who she realized was still in the tent.

"Shhhh, princess… you know that wouldn't have happened. And she's fine, completely fine. Nobody…"

"Don't tell me nobody died!" Lucy shouted. "She can't come back, can she? You said it yourself when Yukino asked! Nothing can bring her back! And it's all my fault. _All my fault_." She whispered, the tears streaming down her face.

When Loke reached out to comfort her, she slapped his hand away with the hand that had been gripping Aquarius's key, leaving a bloody handprint. "Lucy…" he said softly.

"Get out of here," she sobbed. "I don't want to see you or anyone else until I call you. If you come out again, I will personally break our contract if that's what it takes to keep you from putting yourself in danger because of me."

As he stood to leave, Lucy thought she saw tears on his cheeks, but he simply bowed, saying "_As you wish_," and disappeared. She knew that she had been unreasonably cruel with her threat, but it was the only thing that she could think of to keep him from putting himself in danger.

Once he had gone, Lucy heard Laxus move and remembered he had been there the entire time. The realization that he had heard what she said to Loke shamed her, because he would know what she had done and despise her.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine:**

For a brief moment, Lucy wondered if she could run out of the tent and disappear on the island before Laxus caught her. But then she remembered that he could run faster than Natsu, and she wasn't sure if she could even walk.

With her face buried in her hands, she couldn't see what he was doing, but she was willing to bet that he was either going to throw her out or beat her into a pulp the way her nakama did whenever anyone harmed one of their own.

So it surprised her when his big hands encircled her wrists, making her aware of how incredibly fragile her body was, but what was even more surprising was how gentle they were.

"Come on Lucy," he whispered. "Let me see your hand."

Lucy tried to tug out of his grasp, but he was too firm. "You're bleeding Lucy. I need to wrap your hand up before it gets infected."

Letting him pull her hand away from her face, she was surprised to see that her hand was indeed bleeding. Until this moment, she hadn't noticed. Carefully, he inspected the cut before beginning to wrap it with bandages from the first aid kit he had set on the bed beside her.

"I didn't know you could be that harsh," he murmured as he worked.

She stared blankly at him, but he kept talking. "I know that you're his master, and he's supposed to serve you, but it seems like Loke would do anything for you. He was just looking out for you."

A tear slipped down her cheek, but he pretended not to notice. "I did what I needed to do," she whispered as another tear joined the first. "It was the only thing I could do to prevent him from opening his gate again."

"If you say so," Laxus said. "I suppose you know him better than anyone else does. But I did know Loke the Fairy Tail mage, and if he thought someone was in danger, he would do whatever it took to help them. That's the problem with us Fairies. We care too much."

Finishing her hand, he rocked back on his heels looking at her. Lucy ignored him, looking at the tent wall instead. But he wouldn't take the hint and leave so she could cry. "How did you cut yourself anyway?" Picking up a small towel from the shelf, he dumped the water from the glass he had apparently stowed under her cot onto it and started wiping her face clean.

"Don't know," she murmured, absently fingering Aquarius's key out of habit.

"Hey, that key has blood on it. Do you want me to clean it off for you?" Laxus reached out to take her key ring, but she snatched it away from him.

"No! Don't touch her!" Lucy cried, cradling Aquarius's broken key to her chest.

"Okay, okay," he said, retreating. "Can you tell me what happened to it though? It looks smaller than your other keys."

"_It's broken_," she whispered brokenly, sobs shaking her body. "_I broke it_."

Tears slid down her face as she rocked back and forth. "_It's all my fault_," she sobbed.

"I'm sure if you broke it, you must have had a good reason to," Laxus said, sitting more comfortably on the ground. "Mavis told me that Celestial Spirits value promises above everything else. What was your spirit like?"

"She hated me," Lucy said between sobs. "Even as I was breaking the key she told me how much she hated that my mother had left her key to me. But she didn't. When I broke her key, she was crying. When he gave me her magic, I felt it. She was my first friend."

Laxus hummed encouragingly. "Sounds like you cared a great deal for her. I know that you wouldn't break her key unless it was absolutely necessary."

"Aquarius…she said it was the only thing I could do. She said the Spirit King was the only one who could save the guild." Lucy said, holding herself even tighter as the tears fell harder. But…b-but to summon him, I had to b-break a k-key. And it had to be a key who t-trusted me. I h-had to sacrifice her to save everyone else."

The words kept flowing out of her, along with the tears. She cried brokenly, holding herself together and rocking her keys while Laxus sat on the ground nearby. "_It's all my fault_," she repeated brokenly, over and over again. "_All my fault_."

"It sounds to me like you did what you had to," Laxus said softly as her tears began to subside. "I don't think you should blame yourself."

"But I'm the reason she can't ever be summoned again," Lucy said.

"But she agreed to it. She wouldn't have told you about summoning the Spirit King if she didn't want you to do it."

"It's all my fault," Lucy repeated stubbornly, feeling exhaustion pass over her like a wave. Laxus helped her lower herself onto her pillow, and watched as she dropped her keys into her bag. When she fell asleep, she knew he was still there keeping vigil over her.


	10. Chapter 10

*****Hey guys, I have an apology to make. This chapter was supposed to be uploaded a lot sooner than it is, but the site wouldn't let me post it! Sorry about the wait!*****

**Chapter Ten:**

When she woke again, Laxus was shaking her awake. "Come on Blondie," he said, motioning towards the open tent flap where the sun was beginning to shine. "Time to train."

With that, he went back outside and left her alone to change. Lucy thought about pulling the blanket over her head and staying there, but she didn't want Laxus to come back and get her. So she rose and dressed, wishing that she had stayed awake long enough to bathe the day before. Crying and Laxus's workout had made her feel sticky and gross, but there wasn't much she could do about that.

He was waiting for her outside the tent, near the path that led to the running trail. "Are you all set Blondie?" he asked.

"As ready as I'll be." Lucy said, facing the running trail. "Is there any particular plan?"

"Self-paced," Laxus said, stretching out. "Mavis will tell us when to stop, but we get to set our own pace. You can go as slow as you want, but if I see you walking, I'll shock you into running." He snickered slightly, and continued: "The trail's nice and clear, so you don't have to worry about getting lost. And if I have to come find you, I'm going to make sure you regret it. Got it all right Blondie?"

Lucy nodded. "Just one thing," she said, checking his position out of the corner of her eye.

"What could you possibly need answered?" Laxus griped. "It's not difficult of a workout."

"Oh, I know," Lucy said sweetly. "Don't call me 'blondie' when you're one yourself," she snapped, giving him a shove while his stretch had him distracted and off balance. While he gawked at her, she sprinted down the trail and around the bend, hearing him shout something after her.

Once she was out of his sight, she scurried up the nearest tree she could climb, knowing that he would be hot on her heels after he had gotten over his shock. By the time she had secreted herself behind a broad trunk, about halfway up, he came around the bend and a medium jog, his head turning back and forth as he looked for her.

Remembering what Natsu had said about a dragon slayer's sense of smell and hearing, she tried to slow her breathing and keep it quiet. Her scent, she couldn't change, but she hoped that not bathing would do something to help conceal her. She wasn't exactly _afraid_ of what Laxus might do, but she did wonder how he thought of her after her confession the day before.

She could hear him grumbling as he passed below the tree she was in, but he soon moved on and put his sound pods on over his ears as he picked up the pace. Staying put in her tree, Lucy waited for him to get far ahead of her. He could have doubled back to try and catch her, or he might be waiting in front of her. With his enhanced senses, he had the advantage on her.

"Why are you hiding from him?" a voice asked, causing Lucy to wobble on her branch.

"Master Mavis," Lucy gasped, sitting down before she could lose her balance and fall. "I didn't see you there."

"Benefit of being a spirit," the First quipped, sitting on the branch next to Lucy. "Any particular reason you're hiding?"

"I shoved him earlier," Lucy admitted, realizing how childish it sounded.

Mavis shrugged. "Did he deserve it?"

"He called me 'Blondie'." Lucy said, scowling.

"We're all blondes here," Mavis mused. "I don't see how that matters."

"It's the principle of it," Lucy muttered. "I hate being referred to as something so obvious. He has no originality."

"Oh?" Mavis asked politely, swinging her feet in the air.

"At least 'Bunny Girl' has a story behind it," Lucy said, picking at the tree bark. "And most people call me Lucy at the guild. Except for Natsu, he'd call me Luce…" her voice trailed off and she leaned against the bark. "Master Mavis, if someone does something bad, can they become good again?"

Studying her, Mavis said: "You sound like someone else who asked me that question before."

"What did you tell them when they asked?" Lucy asked curiously.

"I don't know if doing something bad makes one a bad person in the first place. Why do you ask?" Mavis's gaze pierced Lucy through.

Lucy played nervously with her hands. "I broke one of my keys during the fight with Tartarus."

"Ah," Mavis said, looking off through the trees. "I don't think I've ever heard of a Celestial Gate Key being broken. Gold or silver?"

"Gold," Lucy whispered. "Aquarius."

"Hmm, and a powerful key as well. What happened that led up to its breaking?" the first asked, as if they were a teacher and student discussing a historical account.

"Aquarius told me that I had to summon the Spirit King," Lucy said, her voice shaking. "She said that to do so, the mage had to break a key, and it could only be a key where the spirit and summoner had a high level of trust."

"Did she volunteer herself as the key?" Mavis said.

"Yes," Lucy whispered. "She said she didn't mind it."

"Then it sounds like _she_ sacrificed herself. I don't think that makes you responsible for breaking her key." Mavis said, as if the discussion was closed.

"But I was the one who broke the key!" Lucy half-shouted. "Even if she didn't mind, I still made her the sacrifice to save the guild."

"Tell me Lucy, what was your relationship with Aquarius like?" Mavis said calmly.

"She hated me," Lucy sniffed. "Or that's what she said. But she didn't really."

"From the sounds of it, I don't think that you could _make_ that particular spirit do anything." Mavis commented. "If I remember correctly, this is the spirit that often argued with you and did her best to make sure that you were caught by her magic."

"Yes, that's her," Lucy said. "That's her to the letter."

"As I said, Lucy, I don't think you could _make_ Aquarius do anything she didn't want to. If she told you to break her key, I think that she meant it when she said she didn't mind."

"I know that!" Lucy exclaimed.

"Then is there something else that's bothering you Lucy?" Mavis asked shrewdly.

"Master Mavis, I should be running. Laxus will be mad as it is after the way I left him. Thank you for talking with me." Lucy swung down from the tree, quickly landing on the ground, not noticing the First watching her from the tree they had been sitting in, a knowing glance on her face.

When Mavis finally called a stop to the running, Lucy was drenched in sweat. Returning to the camp, she found Laxus sitting by the fired, soaked in sweat. "Oi, Blondie, what was that about?"

"Don't call me Blondie, hypocrite," she snapped tiredly.

He glared at her. "For that, you're in charge of lunch. Supplies are in the tent. I'm going to go for a swim."

Now it was her turn to glare at him, but if he noticed, he gave no sign. Huffing in annoyance, she went into the tent and scanned the shelf looking for something that she could turn into lunch.

By the time he came back, his hair still dripping water and dressed in fresh clothes, she had eaten and left his plate on the log he usually sat on. As she washed up her dishes and the pot she had used for cooking, she heard him swear under his breath. "Blondie, what is this?"

"Soup and sandwich," she called back. "There's only so much I can do over a campfire."

Before he could do more than growl, she left the dishes in the tent and grabbed her bag. "I'm going to go wash up. Don't forget to clean up after yourself."

Beating a hasty retreat through the brush, she could have sworn she heard the crackle of lightning as it hit a tree behind her. Slowing down, she knew she didn't have much time. Years of working with Natsu had taught her that dragon slayers had large appetites, and his was unlikely to have been satisfied with two sandwiches and a bowl of soup. He had two options: either make more food for himself, or come after her and make her do it. Either option was unpleasant.

Spotting the spring that she had washed in the first night she had been on the island, she stripped down quickly and slid in, reaching for her soap as she did. One of these days she'd have to figure out where Laxus went swimming, but for now the spring was perfectly suitable.

It was one of the quickest baths of her life, but when she changed into fresh clothes she felt more human. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she headed back for camp, knowing that she'd have to face the music sooner or later.

He was sulking by the stones that had to be Mavis's grave, his sound pods over his ears, when she returned. Lucy left her bag in the tent before cautiously approaching him, hand on her whip in case he decided to send lightning at her.

But he didn't open his eyes as she approached, or even as Mavis appeared, sitting on top of her gravestone as if it was any other place on the island. "Hi Lucy, ready for this afternoon's training?"

"Of course, Master Mavis," Lucy said, watching Laxus out of the corner of her eye. "What will we be doing?"

"Building a more permanent camp for the two of you," Mavis said cheerfully. "If you'll both be staying, the tent won't work. Plus I think you would be more comfortable if you had an oven?"

Lucy was surprised that Mavis had been present to hear her griping about the cooking situation. "It certainly would allow me to cook a wider variety. But how?"

Mavis grinned. "When you were here before, did you notice the ruins?"

"Of course," Lucy said. "Do you mean for us to take materials from there?"

"Some of the buildings are relatively intact," Mavis said, projecting a map of the island into the air between them. "We're right here now, and not too far, here, is the old guild hall of the island. It was mostly destroyed when I was a child, but some of the buildings here," she indicated a spot about equidistant from the ruined guild hall and the place where her grave was, "are still in decent shape. An afternoon's work should have one habitable for you two. You will like it Lucy. Right here, next to the buildings, is the old library. Most of the books are very fragile, but some of them are very rare. There might be a few about Celestial magic if you were interested."

Eyes sparkling, Lucy looked at the First. "Really Master Mavis? There might be?"

Nodding, Mavis said: "I learned most of what I knew about book magic from that library until I left the island and started Fairy Tail. You should find it useful, if you are still set on using magic that isn't your summoned spirits."

With a nudge of her foot, Mavis poked the lightning dragon slayer who had been ignoring the conversation around him. "Time to go Laxus. We'll need your help if we're to be done by tonight."

He growled at being disturbed, but the First was unimpressed. "Laxus, unless you want to spend the next year of your life sleeping on the ground, I suggest that you get up."

Laxus growled again, but he got up.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven:**

Mavis was right. Most of the buildings in that area were still standing. But there were places where interior walls had fallen and none of the wooden elements of the houses had survived. Only stone remained, sometimes tumbling in on itself.

Sighing, Lucy stood in the middle of the least damaged building, making a list of what needed to be done. "So, we'll need three rooms. If we rebuild at least half that wall, we can use the tent to make the upper half, and hang it from the rafters once we've replaced them…"

"No can do Blondie," Laxus said, hauling an armful of rubble out through the doorway. "That tent's going on the roof until we can put a permanent one on. If you want three rooms, you'll be contributing some sweat."

Glaring at his retreating back, Lucy reassessed the building for what felt like the umpteenth time. Each time she started to make plans, Laxus shot her down.

And the worst part is, his comments were usually _right_.

"Move it, blondie." Laxus grunted from behind her. "If you're going to live here too, you have to pull your weight. I'm not fixing this place for you to sit around and look pretty in. You want a roof over your head, you work for it."

She grumbled, but he was right. If she didn't do _something_ to help turn the building into a suitable living place, she wouldn't ever feel comfortable. Picking up a chunk of stone, she hauled it outside to where Laxus was dumping the rubble.

He kept her working until nightfall, barking orders left and right. Lucy snapped back, but she couldn't help but admit that his plans were better than hers. She wondered if he had done something like this before.

Standing in the front room, she realized that in a way the building looked a bit like the guild hall. The main room ran the length of the building, with a large fireplace at the back. Laxus had reconstructed the walls so that their individual sleeping rooms were minimized and the public space maximized. While he had told her to keep laying stones for the walls to divide their sleeping space from the common space, he had gone out and come back with a long table. Lucy was going to ask where it had come from, but when she saw the telltale scorch marks she knew that Laxus had made it himself. They didn't have chairs yet but Laxus had made her help him carry the logs that had sat around the fire and placed them around the table. On one side of the back of the main room, a long stone counter had survived the years of abandonment, and the two of them had worked to ensure the stone oven and ingeniously crafted stovetop were safe to use. The last thing they had done was move their belonging into the building and Laxus was returning from their campsite with the tent.

"Oi, blondie," he called from outside. "Put your climbing skills to good use. Instead of hiding from me come help me with the roof."

Trudging outside, she climbed up the side of the building with a bundle of tent fabric tied to her back, glad that the stone hadn't been smoothed so that handholds were numerous. She heard a crackle of lightning, and glared at Laxus as he teleported himself onto the roof. "You couldn't have brought the fabric with you instead of making me carry it."

Grinning at her, he said: "It's called training Blondie. You're too soft. I thought you wanted to get stronger."

Lucy threw the tent material at him, but he caught it easily. "Now, now Blondie, we need to put it _on_ the roof. Unless you want to pick it up and climb up here again?"

As he threw it back to her, she scrambled to catch it without toppling off the roof. Glaring at him, she recovered herself and said: "Okay Sparky, what do we do now?"

"Unwrap the material and throw me one end. We need to stretch it out over the roof so that it won't belly in when it rains. You better hold tight , or I'll make you come up here and fix it when it leaks," he threatened darkly.

Rolling her eyes, Lucy untied the tent material from its wrappings and threw an end across to him, which he caught with ease. "Tie your end to the corner, where that piece of metal is sticking out. Not _there_ Blondie," he said exasperatedly. "_There_. And make sure your knots are strong."

Sticking her tongue out at him, she tied the canvas in place where he indicated, not seeing why his spot was any different than the one she had started to use. "I'd like to see you tie a set of laces that can survive an evening full of dancing," she muttered, irritated at his assumption that she couldn't do anything.

"Dress knots aren't the same as knots used to keep the rain off your head, idiot," he said, snickering as he tied his corner of the tent in place. "Take your other corner and walk as far down the roof as you can without tearing the fabric. You still need it stretched out all the way though."

She had forgotten about his dragon slayer enhanced hearing. "I'd like to see you dance in the middle of a crowd with a dress that's falling off because you didn't tie the laces tight enough," she said, snickering at the visual. "Sometimes, I used to think I would rather have a bit of rain on my head compared to those laces."

Bored, he snapped the tent canvas loudly. "Come on, the light's fading. If you want to be up here in the dark, I don't care, but I'd like to have a roof over my head."

With a roll of her eyes, she started walking carefully across the narrow edge of the roof, placing her steps confidently. She didn't notice Laxus's look of grudging respect as he shuffled down the line of his own side, but she kept moving forward as if she was walking on a smooth street.

Reaching the corner, she tied off the canvas securely and turned to look at him. "Is that tight enough Mr. Expert?" she said, gesturing to the knot. "Do you need to come over and check my work?" she asked sweetly, with an even sweeter smile.

Lucy was rewarded by a full body shudder from Laxus, but he ignored her in favor of tying off his own corner. Dusting off his hands, he said: "I've got an idea…"

"First one down makes dinner? That's an _excellent_ idea. One rule though: no magic. Pure physical strength. Ready, set, go!" Lucy stepped off the edge of the roof, reaching up to grab a handhold and swinging herself to another one before she lost control of her descent. She caught a quick glimpse of Laxus's startled face, but a grin replaced it, and she was forced to keep moving.

Landing on the ground, she was about to call out to him, but her laughter died as he strolled around the corner to her. "Why thanks Blondie, I wanted to swim before dinner. You better make something hearty: I've been working all afternoon on a small bowl of soup and a sandwich. A man needs more than that to keep him running."

Before she could say anything, he strolled off, waving at her. "Later Blondie."

As he disappeared into the trees, she wanted to stomp her foot in anger. He was _such_ a child at times. Now she was definitely not going to get a chance to wash before night fell. Entering the building, Lucy realized in despair that it was dark inside with the tent canvas overhead. There was no way she was going to be able to cook anything in here tonight until they got the lighting situation fixed.

Sighing, she started rummaging through the items on the table, trying to figure out what she could make for dinner if she couldn't use the stove. Finding enough ingredients for a basic stew, she grabbed their largest pot and marched outside, looking for a place to start a fire. Thankfully Laxus had thought to move their supply of firewood to the building, or she would have had to find that too.

With the fire set up, Lucy was about to light it before she realized that she needed water for the stew and for drinking. Standing up, she looked around through the gathering darkness to find either a well or the path back to their old campsite.

"The well's down that path in the middle of a little square," Mavis said, appearing on the other side of the fire pit that Lucy had dug. "If you want to start the fire, I'll make sure that it doesn't get out of hand while you're gone."

"Thank you Master Mavis," Lucy said gratefully, snatching the pot off the ground where it sat amidst the canned goods. "I promise, I'll be right back."

Finding the well right where Mavis had indicated, Lucy filled the pot with more water than she would use while cooking, leaving her enough for drinking and perhaps a quick wash of her face. After returning to the campsite, she chatted idly with Mavis while she prepared the stew, mainly just opening cans and keeping it from boiling over.

When she heard a crackle of lightning, Lucy froze, but it was only Laxus, teleporting himself in front of the building. Seeing the two of them and the fire, he meandered over, grinning all the while.

Bad-temperedly ladling stew into a bowl and topping it with a slice of bread, Lucy shoved it into his hands. "Here," she snapped. "Dinner."

Taking the bowl, he snickered. "What's wrong Blondie, worn out?"

"You are too," she said, filling her own bowl. "Except you've had two chances to clean up and make yourself presentable and I've only had one."

Laxus chuckled. "Was that all Blondie? Don't worry, we'll work some schedule out. Mornings are physical, and once we've got the building done, the afternoons will be magic."

"Other than the walls blocking off our two sleeping rooms, what else do we have to do?" Lucy asked, sitting on the ground with her food.

Taking a bite of stew, Laxus hummed in thought. "I want those to be storage rooms eventually, but we'll finish them tomorrow so we each have a place to sleep in. After that, I want to work on the roof and then replace the missing rafters and second floor. Once that's done, we'll move the beds up there and work on doors and shutters. From there we can do furniture in the evenings or mornings, depending on what we have planned for the rest of our training. You better be prepared to work hard."

Looking up, he found Lucy staring at him. "What?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrows. "You've got this surprisingly well planned out for Mavis only announcing that we would be moving to a permanent structure this afternoon."

He shrugged. "I've been thinking about how the guild building used to be, but instead of offices on the second floor, we need places to sleep. In a way, this _is_ the guild building, just on Tenrou. Which reminds me…" Setting his bowl on the ground, he stood up and centered himself with the doorway. Lightning crackled around his hands, and he carefully traced a pattern in the air, a thin beam of lightning shooting out from his index finger.

When he was finished, a crude replica of the guild's symbol was etched into the stone. Lucy stared at it, and was surprised to find tears filling her eyes. It must have shocked Laxus, because he said: "Blondie, what is it?"

"It's nothing," she said, standing up and going abruptly towards the building. "I'm just tired and need to sleep. You're in charge of cleaning up."

With her arms outstretched, she managed to find her way to the room that her things had been placed in earlier on. Laxus had claimed the cot after sleeping on the forest floor for several nights, and she hadn't had a chance to complain. Stripping off her clothes, glad that they hadn't figured out how to light the building while the walls were still half built, she crawled into her nest of blankets. Once she felt far enough from Laxus, she let the tears fall, stifling her sobs in her pillow. He didn't know it, but he had given her family back just by tracing the symbol in the stone. Seeing it, like this was their temporary guild hall, made her feel as if the day would come when Fairy Tail was re-formed again. It was such a small but powerful gesture to her, and he didn't even understand.

Closing her eyes, she fell asleep with tears still on her face, feeling for the first time in recent memory as if there was a chance that her family was still there for her.


	12. Chapter 12

***** Hi guys! I had a few extra chapters that I was going to post this week because I'm a bit ahead of schedule, so that's why you're getting two chapters today!*****

**Chapter Twelve:**

It had been an exhausting week and a half, Lucy reflected, soaking in the spring by Mavis's grave. Laxus had worked her to the bone, making her do as much of the lifting and climbing as she could without falling over. Thankfully Mavis had talked him into giving her two hours in the library each afternoon, saying that if she was going to be ready to resume training her magic, she would need some time to do research. He grumbled, but she got her two hours.

His way of training certainly was working on increasing her physical strength. She knew that she was able to lift more and climbing took less out of her than it had before. Looking at the calluses on her hands, she smiled slightly. If anything, the two weeks or so that she had spent on Tenrou had definitely made her stronger, but would it help in combat?

"Blondie!" she heard Laxus yell, and she scrambled to cover herself with her hands. "You better not have drowned. Come on, it's time to start dinner."

Waiting a few minutes to make sure he wasn't going to suddenly come crashing through the underbrush, Lucy climbed out of the spring and hurried into her clothes. She wouldn't put it past him to come after her if he thought she was taking too long.

Before returning to Tenrou, she had been used to guys, or so she thought. Who couldn't be, when Grey stripped unconsciously at every possible moment or Natsu crawled into your bed from time to time? But Laxus was different.

It wasn't that he stripped, no he kept his clothes on at all times in her presence. Whether it was him being polite or just his way of doing things, she couldn't tell. He also didn't sneak into her bed like Natsu. Admittedly, her bed was the camp cot that she had inherited from him, which had just enough room for her, but he showed no signs of acting like the fire dragon slayer.

Perhaps she hadn't been around normal guys enough recently? Lucy mused as she walked back towards their guild building. She had just gotten so used to the invasions of her privacy caused by incessant stripping and breaking into her house that being around a guy who _didn't_ do those things felt abnormal. Laxus, after the first day's shock, had learned not to pull her blanket off her to wake her up, and she had learned not to make him haul her out of her room in the morning, since his technique involved throwing her in the nearest body of water, albeit still wrapped in her blanket. He didn't peek on her while she bathed or changed…it was just _weird_, not having to be on her guard. Her "Lucy kick" was getting rusty.

Back at the guild building, she found him sitting at their table on one of the benches he had made that afternoon, a glass of water in his hands. "Took you long enough," he grumbled. "You and Ever are birds of a feather when it comes to taking forever in the shower."

Lucy flapped her hand at him, heading for the stairs into the second floor. "If you were that hungry you could have started dinner already."

"It's not my turn Blondie!" he called as she reached the second floor and opened the door to her room.

Setting her bag at the foot of her bed, Lucy yelled back: "You could have at least started the fire! Since I have to do it, it will take that much longer."

She heard the crackle of lightning, and couldn't tell what he had attempted to harm. Whip at the ready, she descended the stairs carefully, ready for whatever he threw at her.

Scowling at her, his expression got even darker when he saw the whip. Pushing back from the table, he stormed out the door, slamming it shut behind him. Confused, Lucy coiled her whip and continued down the stairs and headed over to the stove. She was surprised to find a newly started fire in it, and realized that the lightning wasn't directed at her, but was his way of starting the fire. Wondering what had made him so angry that he left, she set about picking through their food stores to see what she could make for dinner. There wasn't much left; Laxus hadn't brought very much with him when he left for the island, and Lucy hadn't brought much of anything, not having money to do so.

With a sigh, Lucy started putting together another stew because that was easiest to do with their limited supplies. Laxus might complain, but without different ingredients she was stuck.

By the time she was putting bowls of stew on the table, Laxus still hadn't returned. Starting to worry, Lucy left the guild building, taking one of the lacrima that Laxus had infused with his lightning to light her path. Several of them stood scattered around the building, providing enough illumination to work by.

Standing in the small yard in front of the building, Lucy looked about, trying to figure out where he might have gone. The low murmur of voices suggested that Mavis was somewhere nearby, and she looked up towards the roof. Sure enough, the spirit was sitting up there, perched next to Laxus, and the two of them looked as if they were having a serious conversation. Deciding not to interrupt them, Lucy returned to the guild building and put Laxus's stew back into the pot, pushing it to the back of the sheet of metal that served as their stove so that it would stay warm but not overcook.

Alone at the table, Lucy wondered what was going on with Laxus. There was nothing particular that could have set him off like that, except for maybe her whip. But her problem with her magic power was just that- _her_ problem. She could see the barely hidden frustration in his eyes whenever she went to the library to spend two hours scouring books for some type of magic that she could use in place of her summoning. Lucy knew he didn't understand, and she wouldn't expect him to. He had never been weak in his entire life. Sure, she knew that he came to Tenrou for training, but he seemed like the type of guy who routinely went on training trips to increase his strength. Laxus wasn't anything like her, she who had to struggle just to keep up, and who failed to protect her friends when it mattered the most.

Pushing her empty bowl aside, she lay her head down on the smooth wood of the table and wondered what she was going to do. They were due to resume magic training the next afternoon, and she had made no progress at all. Most of Mavis's books were on caster magic, not holder magic, and she had shown no aptitude for caster magic in her lifetime. It was how most mages were: specializing in one or the other. There were a few books on celestial magic, but they mainly were general knowledge or discussed the finer details of summoning, which she had sworn off.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the door opening. Raising her head, she saw Laxus come in, his face a carefully blank mask. She sighed. Apparently she wouldn't figure out what had made him storm out. Natsu and Grey had been so _easy_ to read compared to him.

"Your dinner's in the pot," she said quietly, studying him. "Hopefully it's still warm."

Grunting at her, he moved to the stove and filled his bowl. Dropping onto the bench on the other side of the table, he seemed to be trying to put as much space between them as possible. Sighing again, she collected her dishes and the ones she used while cooking and poured fresh water into the basin built into the counter to begin washing up.

When he brought over his dishes, she had planned to ask him what he had planned for her in the morning, but he dumped them in the sink and went straight upstairs before she could open her mouth. As she finished cleaning the dishes, Lucy wished he would occasionally be more communicative. She was far too used to Natsu wearing his heart on his sleeve.

Climbing the stairs, she saw his door was already closed, and no sounds came from it. Lucy decided not to bother him and went into her own room. Once changed into her pajamas, she snuggled under the covers. Even though Tenrou was nearly tropical year round, it got cold surrounded by stone walls and floors. Tiredly, she yawned and slipped into peaceful dreams.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen:**

An earsplitting roar woke Lucy, forcing her to sit up instantly and reach for her whip. A moment later, as she heard things crashing in the room next to her, Lucy realized that what she had heard was Laxus, and she wondered if they were being attacked. Memories of Grimoire Heart's attack on Tenrou leapt to mind, but when the noise from next door subsided, she jumped from her bed and grabbed a sweatshirt, pulling it on over her head.

Whip at the ready, she crept across the short balcony hallway to Laxus's door and listened carefully for any sounds. Nothing could be heard, except for a soft tapping, so she pushed open the door and slid inside.

The near darkness kept her from seeing too much of the room, but she could tell that it was in shambles, the bed especially. However, the destruction led straight to the window, where the shutters were hanging open, banging against the stone walls. Sticking her head out the window, she couldn't see Laxus anywhere in the distance and was about to head back to her room to get dressed before going out looking for him when she heard a noise above her.

Remembering seeing him on the roof earlier, Lucy coiled her whip and climbed out the window and up onto the roof. It had started to rain during the night, and the wall was slick, but she made it up without any problems.

As she peered through the drizzle, she could see him at the peak of the roof, looking out over the trees towards the water. Making her way up the roof towards him, she pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt over her hair. He knew that she was there, and she was willing to hazard a guess that he had learned when she was able to read him. This particular instance, Lucy read the tensing muscles in his back as she climbed up as his acknowledgement of her presence. She had learned something about him in the past two weeks. That's why she wasn't surprised when he rumbled: "Go back to bed blondie," without any attempt at not startling her, given their precarious position.

Dropping down behind him, Lucy leaned her back against his broad back, feeling that he was already soaked through. She was surprised at her boldness, and his flinch told her that he was as well, but she simply said: "Too late, I'm already here. Nightmare?"

"No," he growled at her, muscles tensing.

Lucy chuckled. "You're a _very_ bad liar, but I'll play along. So, you wanted to feel the rain, huh? Hoping that there will be lightning? Shame it came at night."

They sat in awkward silence, listening to the rain falling about them, and Lucy could feel Laxus remaining tensed behind her. The feeling reminded her of nights spent with Erza, who hated to talk about her past, but would occasionally have nightmares on their mission and wake up in the middle of the night. Once, when Lucy had woken up as well, she sat with the requip mage and talked until the dawn. With Erza, she had talked about the guild, and her spirits, meaningless, trivial things, but the conversation had moved into deeper waters, and Erza began dropping hints about what her dreams had been about. She never completely opened up to Lucy, but it was a big help for her just to talk a little bit. Laxus however, was almost a stranger to her. Could she do the same for him? She hated seeing any of her nakama like this, closed off and hurting, because they had been there for her over and over again when she needed them.

She didn't know what had gotten into her, but she figured it was the right thing to do, even though the last thing she guessed he wanted to hear about was someone else's nightmares. "I used to have nightmares you know. About Phantom Lord, Tenrou and Acnologia. The Grand Magic Games…" her voice lost its playful tone and turned serious as she remembered.

"Did you know that I saw myself die?" she asked, and was rewarded by another twitch from the dragon slayer behind her.

"We all saw something weird that day blondie," he growled, the rain falling around them. "Grey reckons he died. So did a bunch of others."

"Not _that_ moment," Lucy said softly, knowing the one he referred to. "The gates that opened to let the dragons passed through also allowed for other visitors from the _future_. Like my future self. I came through the gate to warn the me that lives right now. During a fight, she stepped in front of me and took a shot that would have killed me, dying in this timeline."

Pausing for a moment, she felt her chin trembling as she remembered. "It's weird, seeing yourself die in front of your eyes. But it's such an unreal feeling that you can almost think it's a dream. But watching your best friend fall apart at the sight…that's what hurts the most, because it's real then. If he's acting like this, then it must mean that the body on the ground really _is_ yours."

Laxus remained silent, but Lucy kept talking. She couldn't stop the words from spilling out as she recounted her dreams. They were mainly reliving the moment, but sometimes there wasn't a Future Lucy, it was just _her_. Or it was Erza, Mira, Wendy, Levy…the bodies changed sometimes, and it was her going crazy, not Natsu. When she ran out of things to say about the Grand Magic Games nightmares, she started talking about the Tenrou nightmares, and then the Phantom Lord nightmares. Eventually, she ran out of things to say, but Laxus was still tensed behind her.

"You don't have nightmares from Fantasia?" he asked suddenly, after another awkward silence.

Lucy was startled. She didn't expect him to ask about that. "No," she said carefully. "Because Evergreen trapped us in stone, I got off easy. I only had to fight Bixlow, and then destroy one of the lacrima in the Thunder Palace. Unlike most of the guild, I didn't have to fight people I knew at the time. Now if I had to fight Bixlow, it would be harder for me to do so, but I came out of Fantasia relatively unscarred."

"But it left scars," Laxus murmured absently.

Humming, Lucy tipped her head back to look at the rain falling down. "All fights cut you. Some of the cuts linger longer than others. But time heals all cuts, even those that scar in the short term. Fantasia still hurts a bit because it hurt my family, but we love each other so much more than we hurt each other, which makes it possible to forgive. Everyone in Fairy Tail is my precious nakama, no matter what may or may not have happened in the past."

Some of the tension left Laxus's back, but he was still tense. Lucy let herself lapse into silence, simply listening to the falling rain and Laxus's breathing behind her. It was almost like being with her old team, which sent a wave of homesickness flooding over her. Fighting it, and the tears that started to form, the blonde focused on willing everything away. Focusing on the book she had been reading earlier that day about Celestial magic, she threw herself into that, remembering how her magic felt after not using it for several days, not realizing that she had slipped into the same meditative state that Capricorn had been teaching her to use, emitting a faint golden glow. But she was too tired to maintain it for long, and she started to doze off…

Laxus felt the blonde slipping as she fell asleep, and moved to grab her before she fell off the roof. Settling her in his arms, he wondered why she had followed him onto the roof. She was soaked through and shivered slightly in her sleep. Holding her closer, he slid down the gentle slope of the roof until he was at the edge and let himself fall. Landing carefully, the dragon slayer carried her inside the guild building and propped her up against the wall by the empty fireplace. Going upstairs, he returned with his coat and her blanket and pillow. Moving a bench over in front of the fire, he placed the pillow on it and placed her gently on the bench and covered her with the blanket. He knew that she needed to get out of her wet clothes, but there was no way he was going to do that for her.

Starting a fire in the fireplace, he sat on one corner of the other bench with his coat around his shoulders. As much as he wanted to deny it, he had gotten a bit cold as well. Thinking back to the faint glow that had surrounded them at one point, he realized that it had kept them both warm. He knew enough about magic to know that it had been her magic that had appeared, but he hadn't expected it to feel so _warm_…

"It's magic of the heart," a voice said. Mavis appeared, sitting on the end of the bench where Lucy was sleeping. "I told you so," she said softly, looking between the two of them.

"Don't start with me First," he muttered, laying his head down on the table. "That wasn't what the nightmare was about anyway."

The spirit snickered. "She was right too, but I won't play along. You can try to deny it all you want, but it won't change the truth."

Ignoring her, Laxus closed his eyes. He just wanted a peaceful sleep without dreams. Was that too much to ask?


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen:**

When Lucy woke, she ached all over. Sitting up, she fell onto the floor, tangled in her blanket. Face to face with the glowing embers in the fireplace, she realized that she wasn't in her room anymore. Someone had placed her on one of the benches on the first floor and started a fire in the fireplace.

Looking around, she saw Laxus sleeping with his head on the table, and the events of the night before came back to her. He must have carried her back inside when she fell asleep on the roof. From the sun shining in through the windows, she assumed it was a little after dawn, right about the time when Laxus normally woke her.

Quietly getting up, she realized that her clothes were still damp. Making a face, she slipped upstairs to change into something drier and better for training.

As she came back down the stairs, Lucy saw that Laxus was still asleep, draped in his coat. Watching him as he slept, she realized that he looked a lot younger and softer when he was asleep, without his trademark arrogance that he wore around himself like a cloak. Carefully, she reached out to run her fingers through her hair and found that it was soft. Lucy didn't know what she had expected, but soft wasn't it.

Under her touch, he stirred, and she quickly withdrew her hand. Raising his head from his arms, he looked blearily at her, seeming confused. "Wha-?"

"Tenrou?" Lucy prompted softly. "We've been here two weeks, and last night we had a conversation on the roof. You must have brought us inside and fallen asleep at the table."

Blinking, Laxus's gaze sharpened, and he was back to being the Laxus who had bullied her mercilessly during training for the past two weeks. "I knew you were a dumb blonde, but I still can't believe that you fell asleep on a roof in the rain. If it weren't for me…"

Lucy cut him off. "If it weren't for you running like a frightened cat, we could have had the conversation like normal people here at the table." She was frustrated. All he ever seemed to say to her was how stupid or weak she was.

He bristled. "I never asked you to go out there. In fact, I would have been better off if you had stayed in your bed where you belonged. Nobody likes a nosy person, especially not a nosy blonde."

"That's rich, coming from the blonde who had a conversation with one of my spirits about things I didn't want talked about!" Lucy shouted, storming out of the guild building. "I'm going to do my running!"

Taking off for the beach, Lucy threw herself into the shifting sands, running around the beach for an hour and a half, longer than she usually ran, but she was frustrated with Laxus. Too annoyed to see what he wanted her to do after the running, she started climbing the trees nearest the beach, seeing if she could move from branch to branch like the acrobats who had once visited the Heartfilia estate. She had been so taken with them that she had snuck away from her tutor and begged them to teach her all that they knew. At the time she couldn't practice much, but after being in Fairy Tail, she had plenty of opportunities to work on her acrobatics.

As she paused on a particularly large branch, she saw Mavis nearby and swung over to the first guild master. "Good morning Master Mavis," she said cheerfully, her previous bad mood almost gone.

"Good morning Lucy," the First replied. "You looked as if you were having fun."

"When I was a kid there was a time where I wanted to be an acrobat," Lucy admitted ruefully. "I guess I sort of became one when I joined Fairy Tail."

Mavis laughed. "I assume it comes in handy when you're trying to avoid the full guild brawls?"

"That, and avoiding Natsu on a rampage," Lucy said ruefully, remembering a few occasions. "Is there anything in particular you wanted to tell me First?"

"Not really," Mavis said idly, standing up and walking along the branch as if it were a tightrope. "Is my library helpful?"

Lucy's smile dimmed. "Not exactly," she said quietly. "The books on Celestial magic are very good, but unfortunately nobody has ever thought of spells for Celestial mages to use other than Urano Metria, but that was created by the Spirit King and lost some time ago before Hibiki taught it to me. I'm at a bit of a standstill."

"Hmmm, and I assume you have no ability for any type of caster magic, other than Urano Metria, only holder magic?" Mavis asked, tapping her finger against her chin.

"No Master Mavis. The only magic I've been able to do is summoning, Urano Metria, and using my whip, which came from the Spirit Realm."

"Well, that makes things more difficult for you," Mavis said bluntly. "You'll either have to develop something new, or you'll have to return to your summoning."

Her words stung Lucy. "There isn't anything else I can do?" she asked quietly, her voice trembling slightly.

Mavis shook her head. "I _could_ teach you Fairy Glitter," the spirit admitted, "but it would require you to be completely full of Celestial Magic, and it would take everything you had. It would act in the same way that the Third and Laxus use Fairy Law: you would have to use it only in desperate measures. For routine guild work, Fairy Glitter would not function for you."

Lucy sighed. She hadn't hoped that the First would teach her Fairy Glitter, but now that she heard the reasons why it couldn't be done, she understood that even if she knew the spell, it wouldn't solve her problem. "I suppose I'll have to work on my melee combat then," she said sadly, imagining the rough months under Laxus's impatient tutorial ahead.

"You will never be a melee fighter like the dragon slayers, or your friend Erza," Mavis said gently. "Erza succeeds because of her ability to requip armors and swords that enhance her own capabilities while negating her opponent's. Without that ability, you would be at a disadvantage because you could only prepare one attack style per fight. In the Grand Magic Games, such a strategy _might_ work in your favor, but the majority of the time it would fail you."

"While you have great fortitude, your body will never be able to deliver the punishing blows that the dragon slayers can, and you also will not be able to withstand them. Remember your fight with Laxus the other day. He did not show very much of his strength because you aren't a physical threat."

"How did you do it, Master?" Lucy asked, staring at the young form before her. "You're smaller than I am…"

She smiled. "My first brand of magic was illusionary magic. As long as my opponent was distracted, it didn't matter what I did to finish the battle in the end."

"So what am I supposed to do?" Lucy said. "If I can't learn another type of magic, I'm not going to get stronger, and coming here was a mistake."

"Was it really?" Mavis said. "You said you had nowhere else to go, and you wanted to stay near the guild. I think coming here was your _only_ option."

"But how am I supposed to train?"

"Laxus is already working on you physically. He confided in me today that he would be working on your agility and speed from here on, now that you're in better physical shape overall. With that type of training, you can get close to an opponent's weak spots and avoid their attacks. Your own strength won't matter, as long as your attacks are effective. Magically, however, you will have to find your own way. The two of us are at a loss." Mavis's face turned into a childish pout, causing Lucy to smile despite herself. "You're certainly not an easy person to train, Lucy Heartfilia."

"Sorry Master," Lucy said. "But I need to be stronger."

"Just remember that strength isn't everything," Mavis cautioned her. "Without heart, strength is worthless. The strongest person is the one who fights to protect. Erza Scarlet took down 100 monsters only because she had the strength of the guild supporting her. You can do the same as she did."

Lucy shook her head. "I can't," she said flatly. "Even with everyone behind me, I can't."

Studying Lucy, Mavis shrugged. "If you say so. But remember: you are the only Celestial Mage in history who has summoned the Spirit King. That in and of itself is an accomplishment. Don't lose sight of it."

She turned as if to walk away, but Lucy called out to her. "Master Mavis, do you know what Laxus wants me to do today?"

Mavis shook her head. "Laxus is gone. He left to get supplies. Don't expect him back before evening. You're on your own for training."

With that, she disappeared, leaving Lucy alone on the branch. Climbing down, she headed back towards the guild building for her clothes and toiletries. She would bathe, eat, and then spend the rest of the day in the library. Maybe she would find the answer to her magic problem so that she could start training the next day.


	15. Chapter 15

*****Hi guys! This has a bit of fluff in it, so I wanted to post it for Valentine's Day, which is why I posted so many chapters this week. I'll go back to a normal(ish) schedule of ~2 chapters/week, but for now, enjoy!*****

**Chapter Fifteen:**

When Laxus returned, he found the guild building deserted. At least, the blonde mage didn't come running out to see what the loud noise was when he teleported himself in front of the building. Shrugging, he left the crate he had carried there and went back for another.

By the time he had finished moving all the crates, he was slightly worried. With all the noise he had been making, she should have come out to see what was going on. And it was dark, but none of the lacrimas in the building were lit, meaning she wasn't on the main floor. Going into the building, he found the stove stone cold, meaning that if she had eaten, it was a while ago. When he climbed the stairs, he found her room empty, as well as his.

Concerned, he returned to the clearing in front of the building, looking around for any sign of where she was. Her bag had been in her room, so she was still on the island and wasn't bathing. Taking a deep breath, he found her scent and started to follow it through the tumbling buildings.

Arriving at the library, he saw the familiar glow of the lacrima coming from inside. Carefully moving through the maze of shelves, he found her asleep at one of the tables, head pillowed on a book, Gale Force Glasses half hanging off. Books were stacked around her, and he could see that she had been there all afternoon at least.

"She's trying so hard," Mavis said, appearing next to her. "She didn't stop for dinner or anything, just kept trying to find an answer."

Laxus looked at her, seeing the bruises from training and the little frown on her face. "I know," he admitted. "But she already knows the answer."

"She knows _an_ answer," Mavis corrected sternly. "But if she doesn't want to use her spirits, who are you to make her? Would you have made Mirajane use her Satan Soul after Edo-Lisanna's death?"

Shaking his head, Laxus wondered what to do with the girl in front of him. With a gentle movement, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the library.

The cooler air woke her, and she stirred in his arms. "Laxus?" she murmured, half asleep.

"Hey Blondie," he said, not knowing what else to say.

Even half asleep, she managed a grimace. "Don't call me blondie," she said instinctively, followed by: "I am a dumb blonde."

He arched his eyebrow. "And why is that?"

"Because…"she yawned. "Couldn't find…use for my magic."

"Maybe there isn't one," he suggested, nudging open the front door with his foot. "Maybe the only thing you'll be able to use is your summoning."

"Don't wanna," the Celestial mage said, yawning. "Don't wanna hurt them again."

Carrying her up the stairs, he said softly: "Did you hurt them before?" He didn't know what she was talking about, but he figured he'd keep the conversation going a little bit longer.

"Aquarius," she murmured, clutching the front of his shirt. "Sacrificed her…for them. Don't wanna do it…again."

As he laid her gently in her cot, he found that he couldn't make her fingers let go of his shirt. "Blondie, you need to let go of me," he whispered softly. "You need to sleep."

"Not until I figure it out," she insisted, but was betrayed by another yawn. "Can't rest until I get stronger."

"But to get stronger you need to sleep," he said, trying again to untangle her fingers from his shirt, but she wouldn't budge. Sighing, he drew the shirt over his head and left it with her. She was already asleep anyway.

Returning to the first floor, he saw that Mavis had followed them from the library. "You were gentle with her just then." The spirit commented, watching him go out to the yard and pick up a crate. "You're rarely gentle."

"Dragon slayers aren't known for their tender loving care," he said, grunting as he moved the crate into one of the storage rooms. "She was so out of it I didn't feel right messing with her."

"But you felt okay giving her your shirt?" the First asked slyly.

He turned on her. "You try getting that girl's hands out of your shirt without waking her and then you see how much easier it is to just give her the damn thing." Stomping back outside, he grabbed another crate and moved it inside.

The spirit chuckled. "Normally you would have woken her up."

"I did that last night," he said, jaw clenched in irritation. "I don't want her falling asleep on me tomorrow."

"You know Laxus, it's not a bad thing to be gentle," Mavis said idly, watching him move crates into the storage room. "In fact, the best guild masters are gentle when they need to be."

He rolled his eyes. "I know that," he said, stacking crates to make room for more. "I could have left her in that library. She would have screeched at me in the morning for that though."

She flapped her hand at him. "But you would have snapped right back at her. You always do."

Laxus turned on her again. "Will you leave it alone? Stop trying to make out like I'm treating her specially. She's just another member of the guild, okay?"

Mavis clapped excitedly. "This is a big step for you!" she said, sounding like Mira when she was matchmaking.

"Oh no you don't," he said, his voice low.

"What do you mean?" she asked, offended.

"You are not allowed to try and force me into…_something_ with Blondie," he snapped, looming over her. "I am a member of her guild and her trainer, but I will NOT be forced into someone's scheme to set me up with a girl."

"Nobody's trying to set you up…" Mavis said soothingly. "I'm just pointing out that you're making progress."

"Well, stop making it sound like we're an item," Laxus said, lighting crackling around him. "I don't like relationships."

"Because they mean you actually have to _talk_ to someone?" Mavis asked, ducking as a stray piece of lightning shot over her head. "Don't lose control just because you're frustrated. Natsu's worse than I am."

"No," he muttered, going out for the last crate. "In this particular situation, Mira's worse."

Mavis grinned. "So just think of me as training you for dealing with her."

He looked flatly at her. "You will not pair us together just because we're on the same island. She's Natsu's. I don't go after taken women, even if I'm interested."

"If you insist," Mavis said glumly. "I was hoping that you might actually open up to someone for once. She opened up to you last night."

"I didn't ask her to," he said, beyond frustrated at this point. "I don't _want_ to talk about things. It never does anything but make it complicated. She just started yammering away about things."

"It seemed to help _her_," said the spirit. "She seemed to be in a good mood until you wrecked it this morning."

Outraged, Laxus glared at the tiny girl, who glared right back. "What do you think telling her she was a dumb blonde was, complimenting her?" Mavis said. "And it's such an original insult too."

"Stay out of it, Mavis," he warned, heading up the stairs. "And don't remind me why I came here in an attempt to get me to stay and keep arguing with you about this. I know why I came to Tenrou, and I'm not likely to forget it anytime soon."

If he had looked behind, he would have seen the first master of Fairy Tail pouting at his harsh words. "You dumb blonde," she said quietly looking at his closed door. "Can't you see that the two of you need each other's help to heal?"


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen:**

Lucy woke in the morning to the sound of Laxus banging metal on metal outside her door. Stalking over to it, she threw it open to see him standing there with a pot and a spoon. "Twenty minute warm-up run. Meet me in the clearing where we sparred when you're done."

She shut the door and changed into her training clothes. Something on the floor next to her bed caught her eye, and she realized that it was one of his shirts. She tried to remember what it was doing in her room, but only snatches of her trip from the library to her room came to mind, none of them explaining the shirt.

Carrying it downstairs with her, she dropped it on the table in front of him. "Why was this in my room?"

"You wouldn't let go of it," he said matter-of-factly, drinking from a steaming mug. "I had to either take it off or wake you up. Be grateful I chose to leave it there."

"You're as bad as Grey," she said under her breath before catching sight of the contents of his mug. "Is that tea?"

He nodded. "I picked some up when I went for the supplies yesterday. The water in the kettle might still be hot."

She found a mug and the tea leaves and made herself a cup of tea and grabbed the plate of food he had left on the counter. Hurrying through her food, she lingered slightly over the tea, but left when he started glaring at her.

After her warmup, Lucy arrived in the clearing only to find it deserted. Standing in the center, she waited for Laxus to arrive, and was nearly shocked by a bolt of lightning that crashed down next to her, causing every hair to stand on end.

"New game today Blondie," she heard him call from somewhere above her. "You dodge, or you get zapped. Don't worry, it won't knock you out. But it will sting a bit, so don't get caught."

It took another warning shot for her to realize that he was serious. Three dodged shots later, she realized that he was moving about in the trees above her. When she moved towards the trees, he drove her away with concentrated bursts of lightning. She got the message: no climbing.

Grasping control of her breathing, she tried to figure out a pattern in the strikes, but she couldn't see a rhythm. _Lightning strikes randomly, remember_?

"Don't even bother trying to think blondie!" he barked from above her. "Dodging needs to be instinctive! If you have time to think, I'm not pushing you hard enough!"

_Dodging only works until you get tired, idiot_. Lucy thought bitterly, dodging again as he increased the number of bolts that he sent at her. _If I'm going to use it successfully, I need to be able to use it to buy time, not as a whole strategy_.

Narrowing her eyes, she tracked his movements through the trees, noticing that his pattern was randomized there as well. Frowning, she sidestepped another bolt of lightning, allowing him to drive her towards one of the trees without him noticing.

_Now!_ She thought, as he prepared to drive her back from the trees, and Lucy kicked off from the ground, reaching for the low hanging branch that had been her target. He reacted a fraction of a second too slow, and she was in the tree, climbing quickly, lighting crackling furiously around her. Laxus seemed to be trying to drive her back down onto the ground, but she swung from branch to branch, moving around the clearing while trying to find him.

He was the one who found _her_ though, as he teleported in front of her as she was poised to swing onto the branch he landed on. Twisting, she used her momentum to slam into his chest with her feet, but he had already moved, and all she got was a faint crackle of electricity. Behind her, she could hear him reappearing, and she let go of the branch, dropping quickly and grabbing a new branch. Scurrying back up the tree, she ducked another bolt of lightning and caught the branch above their heads.

With a heave, she swung herself over his head, but he stayed in place as her feet came hurtling towards them. Eyes widening, Lucy saw the lightning crackling around his hands, and only had a moment to realize what was about to happen before he caught her foot, sending little jolts of electricity up her body. Unconsciously, Lucy let go of the branch she had been holding and found herself freefalling to the ground, but another crackle of lightning, bright light surrounding her, and she was held in someone's arms and looking at the ground.

Laxus dumped her on the ground, where she sprawled ungainly, limbs twitching from the electric shock and the teleportation. For a moment, Lucy wasn't sure if she was going to be sick or not.

Above her, she could hear him chuckling. Prying herself off the ground, she bit her lip and vowed that she wouldn't be sick. Fighting for control over her trembling limbs, she sat up and glared at Laxus, who just laughed harder.

"You can't be serious Blondie. You expected me to just take a hit?" he snickered, and her glare got darker. "Blondie, I don't give out free hits. _Nobody_ ever gives out a free hit. If you want to hit me, you've got to work for it. Frontal attacks are _useless_ against an opponent who is bigger than you and knows you're coming. If you wanted to make that work, you should have feinted like you were coming around the front and gotten me from the back, where I couldn't see you."

Lucy tried to stand, but her legs gave out and she tumbled back down to the ground. Laxus's laughter subsided, and he sat on the ground next to her. "Easy, you don't want to take this too fast. My lighting messes with your nerves, which is why you feel so weird right now. Just sit there and relax until you stop shaking."

Looking at him, Lucy asked: "So, did I pass?"

He chuckled again. "You think that's a test? Blondie, that was training. My plan was for you to keep dodging for an hour to build stamina and reflexes. Coming after me was not what you were supposed to do. Although it did show me that your reflexes are better than I expected…"

"Come on," Lucy muttered, rubbing a sore muscle in her leg, which was still tingling a bit. "If you can't dodge Natsu, you're out in the first minute of any Fairy Tail brawl. I prefer _not_ being injured more than necessary."

"You do have a point there," Laxus acknowledged, lounging next to her. "How did you get so good at climbing trees? I haven't made you work on moving about in the branches, although now that I think of it, that's a good idea."

"I wanted to be an acrobat," Lucy said, feeling her arm stop tingling. "When I was a kid, I used to play in the gardens and pretend I was one. And with Natsu around, sometimes the trees may or may not be safer, especially when Happy _drops_ you."

Snickering, Laxus said: "That's why I'm not complaining about not having an Exceed. Too much hassle for me."

"What _isn't_ too much hassle for you?" Lucy muttered under her breath, knowing that he'd hear it anyway.

Musing, Laxus replied: "Eating. Sleeping. Training…"

Lucy rolled her eyes. "So pretty much anything that doesn't require people then."

Earnestly, Laxus shook his head. "No, eating is best when you don't have to cook or clean up afterwards…" At her look of annoyance, he laughed, and then calmed down. "Not really Blondie. I don't mind being around people, I just don't _need_ to be around them. I'm a bit of a loner."

"I hadn't noticed," Lucy said dryly, experimentally wiggling her toes.

"Blondie," he said, something in his voice making her look up at him. "You can trust me when I say that my nakama really are just that. Nakama. Even if the flaming idiot gets on my nerves, or I want to send someone else flying, they're still my nakama. Just like you are. So you don't ever have to be worried about any of that shit when it comes to me. You need it, you ask for it, you'll get it. I've got your back, and I trust you with mine. Do you understand?"

Lucy nodded mutely. Listening to him talk, she felt as if she was new to Fairy Tail again, sitting with Mira as the older girl explained how the guild was so much more than just a collection of people to do jobs with, how it was a family. She was surprised to hear him talking like this, since it was completely out of character. He was an odd mixture of mellow, funny, and commanding, and Lucy realized that she was experiencing what only the Raijinshu ever got to see from him. If he was like this all the time, he'd be able to lead _armies_.

She must have been looking at him oddly, because the look disappeared from his face, replaced with a scowl. "What, did I grow two heads or something blondie?"

"Just the one," she said, eyes sparkling with mischief, "but it's blonde and ugly."

For a moment, he looked confused, but it was quickly replaced with insulted pride. "Have you seen a mirror recently blondie?" he quipped, his eyebrows raised. "You're not so pretty yourself."

Reaching over, she smacking him lightly in the arm. "Well, as long as I don't descend to your level I'm fine then, and I get to look at that day in and day out." She said lightly, chuckling. "What, did you come to Tenrou because the girls all ran away?"

He rose to the occasion. "That ocean out there rises an inch every day I'm away because they miss me so much," he said loftily, ignoring her failed attempts to hide her giggles. "And if I'm really _that_ ugly, how come you haven't run yet?"

"Community service," Lucy said, trying to keep a straight face. "Someone out there thinks there's hope for you, although I'm not sure. You're not off to a good start."

Laxus seemed to flinch slightly, but he replied back readily. "I don't see an army of well-wishers bemoaning your absence blondie. Don't hate what you don't have. Just makes you uglier."

"I'll have you know that when we return to Hargeon, there will be _lines_ of people waiting to see me," she said, preening slightly. "Your girls will have withered away from crying so much by then."

Snorting, Laxus said: "And I assume flame brain will be at the top of the line with a dozen roses?"

"No," she said, merriment leaving her face. Wrapping her arms around herself, Lucy said quietly. "No, if he was going to be there, he would have said goodbye to my face instead of just taking off."

Looking slightly panicked, Laxus seemed to be searching for words to dig himself out of the hole he had accidentally just fallen into, but Lucy ignored him, saying: "I'm not his keeper, or his mother, or his girlfriend, and I don't want to be. But he's my teammate. Can't he do us the common decency of saying goodbye in person instead of leaving a note? If he had come and said goodbye to all of us, it wouldn't have hurt so much, but him just taking off and making me tell everyone else? He brought me to Fairy Tail…he was my first teammate, and we've been together through lots of things. Him just leaving without saying goodbye…it hurts."

Lucy could tell that her outburst had startled Laxus, but she kept going, venting everything that had been building up since Tartarus and the disbanding of the guild. "You're supposed to be there for your nakama, and I needed him. I had just lost Aquarius and now I was losing him. And Grey never came back, and then Erza went with Doranbolt when he asked her because she thought she might find Jellal that way…everyone left when I thought they would stay, just like my mother. Just like Aquarius. And I was all alone and it hurt because I couldn't go _anywhere_ without remembering them…"

Slamming her fists into the ground, Lucy stood up and marched away. Laxus called after her, but she ignored him. Speeding up, she fell into a jog and sprinted down the path. She knew that she couldn't outrun her feelings, but she just needed to run. She needed to run out all the pain until she dropped down exhausted, but calm at last. Lucy knew that she was reaching the point where she was tired of crying, but it didn't mean that it still didn't _hurt_.

She didn't know how long she ended up running, but she was starting to wobble when lightning flashed in front of her and Laxus's hand was on her shoulder, propping her up. "Hey Blondie, don't think that overworking this morning will get you out of training this afternoon," he said lightly as if she hadn't been yelling about her friends earlier. "It will get you out of making lunch though, but you'll be making dinner."

He studied her for a moment before saying: "I'd normally make you walk back on your own two feet, but you look as if you need a breather. Stay still, and don't squirm."

Blinded by light, Lucy was forced to close her eyes against the gut wrenching sensation. Instinctively she knew that Laxus was teleporting them back to the guild hall. Holding her by the collar of her shirt, he dragged her inside and dropped her on the bench. Placing a glass of water in front of her, he said: "You stay here and drink this while I get lunch ready. If you haven't drunk that entire glass by the time I put a plate in front of you, you're going to run double laps tomorrow."

Grinning at his threat, Lucy picked up the glass and started sipping away at it while he bustled about the building working on lunch preparations. Snickering as he nearly dropped one of the fresh vegetables he was using, she rolled her eyes at his glare and continued drinking. By the time he put a plate of food in front of her, the glass was empty. Laxus took it away, refilled it, and came back with his own plate. They ate in silence for a bit until the lightning dragon slayer said: "So, let's talk about your magic training now."

Lucy gulped nervously, nearly choking on her food. Waiting a minute to make sure she was okay, Laxus began laughing, and Lucy threw what was left of her water in his face and felt like they were in a bad romantic comedy.

"Really?" he said, unfazed by the water dripping down his face. "_That_ was the best you could think of?"

As she stood up to refill her glass, Lucy said: "It was the closest thing to hand. Although, I should be glad that you at least waited to see if I was going to need assistance before you nearly fell off the bench laughing."

"You should have seen your face though," he said, subsiding into snickers. "It was if I had said we were going to talk about the birds and the bees."

Rolling her eyes, Lucy said: "I'm eighteen, not twelve. If I wasn't aware of those particular details right now, I'd be extremely surprised. And what are you, twenty-four? It shouldn't still be funny."

"I'm surprised they taught the pampered princess the harsh facts of life," Laxus chuckled, ignoring the glare Lucy sent his way. "Aren't you supposed to be sheltered?"

"Not so much a pampered princess so much as the family broodmare," Lucy muttered darkly, stabbing at the food on her plate. "If they could get away with simply teaching you to bear heirs, they probably would."

Coming down from his laughter, Laxus took a gulp of his water, the odd chuckle escaping him. "Well it's good to know that you learned something prior to your arrival at Fairy Tail. Anyway, we need to talk about your magic training. The best way to increase overall magical power is by meditating. Tenrou's a great place for this because it just is naturally abundant in magic. My plan for you is to meditate and increase your reserves while Mavis continues to research Celestial Magic for you in hopes of finding a solution to your problem. Unless," he looked carefully at her, "Would you be willing to consider summoning your spirits?"

At her death glare, he held his hands up. "Not for combat use, but just to talk to them. Surely someone has to know something that might help you."

She shook her head adamantly. "No," she said. "I promised them that I wouldn't summon them until I was able to protect them, and I can't yet."

He sighed in frustration. "Lucy, does this have something to do with your spirit, the one with the broken key? Aquarius?"

Even though she refused to look at him, she could hear him growl and imagine the look on his face. "Lucy, I'm going to be brutally honest here. Your spirits are…well they're not _alive_ like people in our world are. From what Loke said, she's still alive in her own world…"

Tears leaked out of her eyes as she turned on him, standing up so suddenly that she knocked the bench over. "If it was Cana, would you be saying this? Or Mira, or Erza, Wendy, Ever, Natsu, Grey, Freed, Bickslow…they're not like his dolls. When they get destroyed he just finds new vessels. But when my key is broken, I can never see my friend again! She's as good as dead, and she'll never have another master because I broke her key. Aquarius was my nakama just as much as you are. And I'm responsible for sacrificing her. So don't you pretend like it's not a big deal!"

Before she could storm off, she felt his hands encircling her wrist in a gentle restraint. He tugged gently, as if he was offering to give her a hug, but she kept herself as far from him as she could. Behind her, he sighed again, but it was deeper, less frustrated. "Lucy…"

"I don't want your pity," she spat, trying to wrench herself free. "If you have time for that, we should be training. Just don't _ever_ trivialize my spirits like that again. You knew Leo when he was Loke, so you should know better."

"If that's what you want Lucy," he said quietly, and she was reminded of his words from earlier. _You want it, you ask for it, you'll get it_. "Finish your lunch, and I'll take you to the place where you'll be meditating."

Quietly, Lucy sat down, righting the overturned bench, and picked up her fork again. She avoided eye contact with Laxus, afraid that seeing the expression on his face would break her control, and she didn't want to get angry again, or even sad. Sighing, she brought a forkful of food to her mouth. Was it too much to ask for her to just go back to normal, albeit a stronger version of normal?


	17. Chapter 17

*****Hello all! I just wanted to make a quick comment. Several reviewers have been wondering when I will address Lucy's water magic. When I read the manga, my interpretation was that Aquarius's water magic was given to her for that one battle, and has since faded away. This interpretation may be wrong, but for the purpose of this story, she does NOT have water magic. She will, however, come up with an interesting new power, but that's in a few chapters. In the meantime, I appreciate your patience with me, as well as your kind reviews! **

**Oh, one more thing. I've officially finished the entire story! You're midway through right now. I've still got to edit lots, with help from my AMAZING sister who has agreed to beta for me, but it's done!*****

**Chapter Seventeen:**

Climbing out of the lake, Lucy reached for her towel. "You can stop being a peeping pervert Laxus, I know you're out there," she called, roughly drying her hair as she sat on the stone at the water's edge. "It's less creepy when you're _not_ hiding in the bushes."

The lightning dragon slayer appeared from the bushes, clad only in his swim trunks. "I thought girls were supposed to want privacy when they were in the water?" he said, dropping his towel on the rock as she rinsed her feet and dried them before slipping her socks and sneakers on.

"Only if we're bathing," Lucy said dryly. "Most women's bathing suits are meant to attract attention from the opposite sex."

"Oh, is that why it's fine if I'm out here having a conversation with you now, but that first morning when I woke you, it wasn't okay for me to see your pajamas?" Laxus asked sarcastically. "Thanks for clearing that up."

Lucy splashed water at him. "If you reached the innocent age of twenty-four without understanding that fundamental difference in situations, I'd be pretty concerned. Especially since you're related to Master."

"What does the old man have to do with swimsuits?" Laxus asked, wading into the lake.

She rolled her eyes. "Has it escaped you that your grandfather is one of the biggest perverts in the guild?"

Laxus rubbed his chin. "Now that you mention it…" he hummed.

"Go ahead and keep playing obliviously," Lucy said, collecting her swimming things. "I did my hundred laps, so I'm done for the morning. Lunch will be ready by the time you get back." _I hope_. "Take all the time you want." _As much as possible please_.

Walking away from the lakeside, she made sure to get far enough from the lake that Laxus wouldn't be able to immediately tell that she wasn't going straight back to the guild building. Then she slipped off the path and changed from her swimsuit into her normal training clothes and headed towards the empty clearing Laxus had made her do sprints in one day. It had been a week since she had begun meditating, and she finally felt that she had enough magical power to do an experiment.

The first day she had meditated, she had been surprised to feel that she had greater magic reserves than she had come to Tenrou with, but Laxus and Mavis had explained that in some cases, training one's body allowed for greater magical ability. Laxus had said ruefully that there was a limit to it, especially when one's magic wasn't tied with their ability to hit things very hard, but she threw herself into her physical training with renewed vigor.

Reaching the clearing, Lucy set her swimming things, wrapped in her towel, at the edge of the clearing on the boulder Laxus had perched on while barking orders. Sitting in the center of the clearing, Lucy assumed her meditation pose, settling her nerves. She would only have this one shot before Laxus would probably be too livid to let her out of his sight. Breathing deeply, she began her incantation when she was settled and at maximum power.

_Survey the Heavens, Open the Heavens..._  
><em>All the stars, far and wide...<em>  
><em>Show me thy appearance...<em>  
><em>With such shine.<em>  
><em>Oh Tetrabiblos... <em>  
><em>I am the ruler of the stars...<em>  
><em>Aspect become complete...<em>  
><em>Open thy malevolent gate.<em>  
><em>Oh 88 Stars of the heaven... <em>  
><em>Shine!<em>  
><strong><em>Urano Metria!<em>**

Laxus's first clue was the sudden influx of magical power coupled with the gathering clouds over one part of the arena. Swimming for the shore, he sprinted down the path, following her scent, hoping he wouldn't be too late. _She's not ready for this!_

Doubling back at one point, he found where she had left the path and charged through the underbrush. _Damn her and her stupid magic_, he thought, racing through the trees. _She was smart enough to keep me from knowing immediately where to teleport, so she's been planning this. Damn her!_

Mavis appeared before him, calling out: "She's in the clearing you used two days ago. Hurry though, she's nearly done."

Feeling his magic swell around him, he teleported instantly to the edge of the clearing, not knowing what was waiting inside. Bright light filled most of the clearing, but he could see her sitting in the center in the pose she used for meditation. Unlike the last time he had seen her try and cast the spell, a magic seal had appeared under her, and he knew, even before he heard her speak, that she wouldn't be able to be interrupted at this point.

Her voice rang out over him, magnified within her magic, and the sound made him shiver a bit.

"_Shine! __**Urano Metria!**__"_

As the spell released, he saw the magic coalesce and strike its target, but his attention was focused on the blonde form being thrown from where she had been sitting. Watching helplessly as she hit the ground, Laxus could tell that she was either in a trance or unconscious. But while the spell was still going on, he couldn't risk entering the clearing until it had run its course. It was the first rule of dealing with spell casters. Interrupt the caster before they finished and cause them to misfire, take them while they were recovering from the aftermath, or dodge what they threw at you. Just never try and interfere directly with a cast spell.

When the light finally subsided, he was able to see the battered form crumpled on the ground at the foot of a tree. Teleporting himself across the distance, he knelt beside her, scanning for obvious injuries.

"She's still alive," Mavis said, appearing on her other side.

"I know that," Laxus growled. "I can hear her heartbeat. Can you tell if her magic's too low?"

The First shook her head. "She's exhausted it, along with most of her physical strength, but she's not in immediate danger from that."

Nodding, Laxus took inventory. Nothing was obviously broken, and what blood there was came from the plethora of small scrapes and cuts she had obtained, companions to the bruises that were already starting to develop.

"Did she hit the tree?" Laxus muttered, glancing up at the offending object in question.

"No, see the skid marks on her and on the ground?" Mavis pointed, and Laxus grunted.

"We can't rule out internal damage or a concussion though. Damn it! Lucy, why couldn't you wait until you were ready?"

Mavis shrugged. "She was ready, you have to admit. To be capable of successfully casting the spell after a little over a month since her past failed attempt shows remarkable progress. Or she was much more powerful that we knew when she arrived."

Carefully, Laxus felt her ribcage, probing for any broken ribs. "There's nothing to suggest that she broke anything, but I'm worried about her head. She needs to see Wendy."

"You don't know where the girl is," Mavis pointed out. "If Lucy is as injured as you think she might be, wandering around trying to find her may do more harm than good."

"The old hag then," Laxus said stubbornly. "She should have stayed in that batty old forest of hers."

"Porlyusica should be able to help her," Mavis agreed. "Do you need me to transport you there?"

Laxus shook his head, carefully gathering the fallen Celestial mage in his arms. "I'll jump to Hargeon, and from there to Magnolia and her house."

"Be safe," Mavis said as lightning enveloped his form. "Bring her back to the island."

Nodding, Laxus disappeared in a flash of lightning.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen:**

Porlyusica was sweeping the snow off her steps when she heard the thunder. Scowling, she watched as lightning condensed into the familiar and unwelcome form of Laxus Dreyar. "I thought I told you I didn't want to see you for at least another year."

"Nice to see you too," he said sarcastically, moving through the snow towards her. "But it's not me I need you to heal."

For the first time, she noticed the familiar blonde form in his arms. Sighing, knowing that her peaceful retirement was about to get a lot more stressful, she moved aside, gesturing with her broom. "Put her on the bed."

Laxus shouldered past her, and she followed him in, seeing that he wasn't dressed for the snow. He had obviously been somewhere warm. "I thought the guild was disbanded," she asked as he lay the mage on the bed she reserved for patients. "For a little bit, I had dared to hope that I might not have to deal with humans any more."

"Well, this human needs your help and I don't know where Wendy is. Just fix her, and we'll get out of here and you can hate us in peace," he shot back. Hitting him upside the head with her broom, she drove him into a corner and ordered him to stay there while she looked at the girl. "What was it this time?"

"She tried casting Urano Metria. It's a spell…"

"Yes, yes, the one she used at the Games. I'm not as ignorant as you believe, human." Busying herself with her patient, she tried to ignore his presence, but it was like trying to ignore a mountain. "Why are you so worried about her? Nothing seems broken."

"Since she cast the spell, she hasn't woken up. No sign of consciousness except for her breathing. The spell knocked her back, and it looked like she hit the ground pretty hard. She may have hit a tree, but I don't think so." Turning at the sound of his voice, the old woman looked at the lightning dragon slayer whom she had known his entire life, even if he didn't know it. Something in his voice made it sound as if he might feel something for this girl. He usually didn't sound like this unless it had to do with his silly rag-tag band of followers.

"The girl has no internal damage, and it doesn't look as if she has a concussion. If you insist, she can stay until she wakes up, but then you have to leave. And you can wait outside," she added, pointing with her broom. "One human in my house is bad enough."

As he turned to leave, surprisingly obedient, she said gruffly: "Put some clothes on while you're at it so I don't have to treat you for hypothermia."

He gave her a puzzled glance, and then seemed to realize that he was still clad in wet swim trunks. Running a hand through his hair, he trudged out into the snow and teleported himself away. Porlyusica sniffed and turned back to the girl on her spare bed. "Why can't you humans just stay out of trouble for once?"

When the lightning cleared, Laxus found himself looking at the house that he rented with his teammates. From the lack of lights and snow piled around the door, he could tell that they hadn't been there recently. All the better for him. He didn't want to see them right now anyway.

Letting himself in through the front, he found the surfaces coated with dust. Freed and the others hadn't been back for several months then. If they had, Freed wouldn't have left until every particle of dust was gone, to the annoyance of Ever. As he trudged up the stairs, Laxus felt a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth as he remembered the days they spent together in the house. While most of the guild may not have found them to be the most demonstrative group, it made the little moments worth more when they happened.

When he reached his room, the door emblazoned by a bright gold plate with his name on it, he smiled for real and pushed open the door. Everything was cleaner than he had left it, meaning that Freed had been through to tidy up. Opening his closet, he found that his hamper was empty. _He doesn't need to do that_. Pulling off his swim trunks and tossing them in the hamper, he rummaged through his dresser for clean clothes and dressed quickly. Grabbing his coat and boots from the closet, he closed everything and prepared to leave again. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his black coverlet, and remembered that the old hag had told him that he could stay outside. Grimacing, he whisked it off his bed and stepped out into the hallway, closing his door behind him.

About to leave the house, Laxus suddenly remembered that Lucy didn't have anything but shorts and a tank top. If he had been cold outside, _she_ would be. And perhaps she wanted to check on her apartment while they were in Magnolia. Heading up to the third floor which was the realm of the sole female in the house, he cautiously opened Ever's closet and tried to find something that would fit Lucy and he thought Ever wouldn't miss. Coming up with no cold weather gear, he returned to the second floor and entered Freed's room. Again, he found no heavy gear, but he did find Freed's collection of coats. Unfortunately, they were all summer weight. Wondering how long his teammates had been away, Laxus returned to his room and rummaged around until he found an old coat and a pair of flannel pants.

With everything gathered, he returned to the old hag's house only to find the door shut in his face when he knocked. Retreating to a boulder on the edge of the clearing, he swept the snow off it and wrapped himself in the coverlet from his bed.

Laxus lost track of time as he sat there, watching the snow float gently down, meditating occasionally out of habit, but when he heard footsteps on the snow, he looked up. At the foot of the boulder was his grandfather. "What are you doing here, Gramps?" he grunted, stretching out his cramped muscles. "How did you know I was here?"

"Porlyusica thought I might want to know that you showed up," he answered, climbing up on the boulder next to him. "I had been wondering where you disappeared to. She added something about wanting to get me out of her hair about you being missing."

"Interfering old hag," he muttered, shaking the snow off his blanket. "I didn't mean to come here in the first place but I had no choice."

Makarov inclined his head. "Where _have_ you been?" he asked curiously. "You disappeared so quickly, and Freed had no information on where you might have gone."

Rolling his eyes, Laxus said: "Not telling. If I wanted company, I would have told someone."

"Why did you come back then, if you wanted to be alone? And why to Porlyusica?" Makarov asked.

"Don't know where Wendy is, and I didn't have the time to waste looking for her." Laxus said, casting a glance towards Porlyusica's house. _She's been out for a while…_

"Are you okay? Did something happen? Is it the anti-ethernano causing some unknown effect?" Laxus watched as his grandfather's face contorted in worry, and then sighed. _Stupid man-hating hag. If she had told him properly, he wouldn't have come rushing out here to check on me._

"I'm fine Gramps," he sighed. "When are you reopening the guild?" he asked, trying to change topics.

"Never," the old man said complacently, watching the snow. "I don't plan on running Fairy Tail anymore."

"If you wanted to retire, you could have gotten a new master. Macao," Laxus suggested, "Or maybe Erza or Wakaba."

"It wasn't about me retiring," Makarov said grumpily. "It was about you brats flying free without the guild tying you down."

Laxus bristled. "Not all of Fairy Tail wanted to leave the guild. For a lot of them, it was the only family they had," he said, thinking of the blonde Celestial mage lying in the house behind them. "Everyone was still hurting from the Tartarus battle. If you were going to disband, you should have waited longer than a week."

"Don't tell me how to run a guild when you've never done it, brat." Makarov growled. "It was the right time. Many people had already left, yourself included."

"But if we left, we thought that our home would be waiting for us when we returned," Laxus said flatly, fixing Makarov with a stare. "You took that away from us. And what about the people who were going to stay?"

Makarov sighed. "It's for the better," he said softly. "Just accept that."

"Not until I see that it's actually for the better," Laxus growled. "You've hurt nakama."

"It's for them that I did this," Makarov said. "You won't understand why, but just accept that it was for them."

"All I know is, you took people's nakama away when they needed them the most." Laxus said, looking back at Porlyusica's house. "That was cruel."

"Why are you here brat?" Makarov said tiredly. "Did you come back just to lecture me?"

"I told you, I needed the hag's help." Laxus said, glaring at the door. "She was the one who brought you here. If you want to blame someone, blame her."

At that moment, the door opened, and Laxus shot upright. Porlyusica stuck her head out the door and pinned them both with a glare. "She's awake. The brat can come in, but you stay out Makarov."

"Who's awake?" Makarov said confusedly, but Laxus had abandoned the blanket and was already striding through the snow. Entering through the doorway, he saw Lucy's eyes fluttering. Taking the chair next to her bed, he watched as she opened them, looking confused. "Where am I?" she croaked.

"The old…Porlyusica's house," Laxus said, casting a glance over his shoulder to see if the woman had caught him nearly referring to her as _the old man-hating hag_, but it seemed as if he was safe for the moment. "When you cast the spell, you passed out and the First and I didn't know if there was something wrong, so I brought you here."

Pausing, he looked at her. "We're going to have a talk about that spell though," he said, his voice low. She looked suitably abashed for a minute, but then the fire was back in her eyes. Forestalling any protests, Laxus said: "Later. First, we need to get back to Tenrou. The First will be worrying. Is there anything you want to do while we're in Magnolia?"

She shook her head, and he handed her the coat and pants he had grabbed. "Put these on."

When Lucy tried to stand to put on the pants, she nearly toppled over. Grabbing her, he helped steady her until they were on, but he could see her legs shaking, even though the pants were twice her size. Wrapping her in his coat, he scooped her up. At her squeak of protest, he said gruffly: "If you want to fall in the snow, be my guest. But I'm not coming back here when you get sick, so keep that in mind."

She nodded, and said: "But can we maybe try something else out?" As she gestured to her position, she blushed. "I feel like a damsel in distress when all I am is tired."

Laxus rolled his eyes. "Would you rather be a sack of potatoes?" he offered, moving to sling her over his shoulders. Eyes wide, she shook her head and he stopped moving, leaving her cradled in his arms.

"You make sure that she rests for a week." The old hag was back, her hand hovering too close to her broom for comfort. "And I don't want to see either of you for the next two years. Get the young Sky Dragon to fix you up."

"Is there anything else she needs to do?" Laxus asked, shifting Lucy to a more comfortable position.

"No." This time, the broom was in her hand, and Laxus moved towards the door, pausing only to say: "Thank you."

The hag slammed the door behind him, and Laxus came face to face with his grandfather, who peered up at the blonde in his arms. "Lucy?" he breathed, and then he threw himself at her, but Laxus plucked him out of the air.

"Back off gramps, she needs rest, not you being perverted."

"Is she why you came here?" Makarov asked, his eyes bright. Laxus stiffened; he had seen that look before on several occasions.

"Don't start with that Gramps," he warned. "I'm just doing what you failed to do." Trudging through the snow, he collected the blanket, throwing it over Lucy. As he prepared to teleport them both out of the snowy clearing, he heard the old man say: "What do you mean?"

"I'm taking care of my nakama."


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen:**

Lucy stirred slightly when they landed, trying to see where they were, but the heavy blanket over her and Laxus's restraining arms prevented her from moving too much. What she could tell was that they were in front of a house and he was opening the door. When he carried her inside, she craned her neck, eager to see where he had brought her.

Her movements brought a chuckle from Laxus, and she could feel it rumbling through his chest. "Why so curious Lucy?"

"Where are we?" she asked, quietly, trying to stifle a yawn. From the look on his face as he looked down at her, she hadn't done very well.

"The Raijinshu's house," he said, and she felt him climbing stairs.

"Why are we here?" she asked, resting her head against his chest.

"I need to put my blanket back," he said with another chuckle at her wide eyes. "What, you didn't think I lived in a tent all the time, did you? The Raijinshu and I pay the rent for the house, so I have a room to store my things."

She felt herself being shifted again as he opened a door, but when she tried to peer into the room she felt herself being restrained by his arms.

"Don't overbalance yourself too much Lucy, or you'll end up on the floor. Hold on a minute, and I'll put you down." True to his word, the next moment she found herself being placed on a bed covered with some of the softest sheets she had ever touched. Snuggling tiredly into them, Lucy felt a small smile slip over her face.

Feeling the weight of the blanket disappear, Lucy reached up and pulled the coat more snugly around her. Laxus had draped it around her, and on her it was almost as good as a blanket. Comfortable, she unconsciously snuggled in for a long nap.

"Don't get too comfortable Lucy, we'll be leaving soon. Those sheets probably smell anyway. The coat too." Laxus's voice was further away than it had been, but Lucy closed her eyes and found that she felt content.

"Lucy," he said, and she opened her eyes and found him crouching next to the bed. "Does the coat smell?"

Shaking her head, she managed a sleepy grin. "Just musty. And…pine I think. It smells clean and bright."

"Freed's favorite laundry detergent," Laxus muttered, moving to sit on the bed next to her. "He must have snuck in and done my laundry again. I can always tell though."

"How?" Lucy wondered.

"The detergent scent," Laxus explained, tapping his nose. "With all of us living and working together, I've picked up on some of the scents they use more commonly. Freed always smells like pine. Bixlow…mainly wood and metal, because of his 'babies'. And Ever tries a new flower every time she can."

"What's your scent?" Lucy mumbled, sniffing the sheets beneath her again, trying to figure it out.

He laughed, and gently rumpled her hair. "If you can smell pine, you won't be able to find it there. My laundry detergent is just a clean linen scent. _My_ scent? I don't know. Nobody's ever told me. Now, do you want to check on your apartment while we're in Magnolia?"

Lucy shook her head. "I don't have an apartment here," she said, yawning again. "Had to give it up since I couldn't pay the rent." She just felt tired, and wished she could just take a nap…

Scopping her up in his arms, Laxus headed out the door, closing it behind him. As he carried her down the stairs, he said: "You don't have to try and stay awake. Go ahead and…"

As he opened the front door, careful not to disturb the sleeping blonde in his arms, Laxus stifled a chuckle. She had to have been exhausted, to fall asleep as he was going down the stairs. He had paused for a moment to leave a message for Freed, if the rune mage got back to the house before he did, before exiting, and now she was completely asleep.

A figure detached itself from the nearby shadows and came into the light. Tensing, Laxus prepared to teleport them out of there, but he recognized the scent and shape. "What did you come here for, Gramps?"

Makarov eyed him. "You weren't in there very long," he commented bluntly.

Laxus glared at him. "Don't get any perverted ideas," he warned lowly. "She's exhausted from training and I needed to put that blanket back. If she didn't pass out, we wouldn't have needed to old hag. I'm just training her."

"What about the Raijinshu?" the third, and sixth, guild master asked. "Surely at least Freed would have come along. Or Evergreen, since it's Lucy."

"I don't know where they are," Laxus grunted, tired of dealing with his grandfather's incessant questioning. "Can I leave, or are you going to badger me some more?"

"Is it that much trouble to keep me from worrying?" Makarov said, face as innocent as a child. Laxus snorted.

"You just want to know if there's any chance of me being seen with the same girl on multiple occasions," he said, turning to walk away. Normally, he would have just teleported, but he had done that to his grandfather before and gotten an earful from it later. And if the decision he made while waiting for Lucy in the snow stayed unchanged, he would be coming back.

"Now Laxus, I'm not getting any younger…" he began, but Laxus cut him off.

"Why is it always like this whenever I'm seen with a girl?" he snapped, more quietly than usual because of the sleeping blonde in his arms. "You can take care of someone without it being anything more than friendship. Just look at the Raijinshu and I. Lucy showed up and needed help, so I'm helping her. I'm going to help them all," he said flatly, fixing Makarov with a stare.

"What do you mean?" Makarov said as Laxus began to walk away again. "Who are you going to help?"

"All of the brats that you left behind."


	20. Chapter 20

When Lucy woke up, she found herself back in her bed on Tenrou. There was no mistaking the heat compared to the winter chill of Magnolia. Thankfully, Laxus had the foresight to take his jacket and the flannel pants off her before he tucked her into her cot, although the thought made her blush.

Struggling to get up, she found that her limbs still refused to cooperate. Rustling the covers a little bit more, she lay back, knowing that the sounds she had made would bring Laxus to check on her if he was nearby. Dragon slayer hearing had _some_ advantages.

Sure enough, he was there in a few minutes, a mug and a bowl in his hands. "I thought that you'd be waking up soon," he said, setting them down on a nearby crate before rearranging her pillows so she could sit up. "Don't try and get up yet though. The old hag said you would need a week's rest. Here, drink this." Offering her the cup, he watched her unnervingly as she brought it to her mouth. Lucy knew her hands were trembling, and it seemed as if he picked up on each little vibration. Taking a sip, she grimaced as the flavor filled her mouth.

"How much sugar did you add to this?" she asked.

"Don't complain," he said sharply. "You need the energy and it's a quick buzz. Now, if you don't drink all of it…"

"You'll what?" Lucy said, taking another sip. "Make me train more?" She thought she had him there, if he was really going to hold her to Porlyusica's week, but he simply chuckled, the sound putting her on edge.

"Nope," he said slowly, allowing her nerves to build up. "I'll just make sure that you get _plenty_ of rest before you resume training. After all, the hag said she doesn't want to see us for the next two years, so if you have another _accident_, we would have to go find Wendy or Chelia. We wouldn't want that now would we?"

_Damn, this man is good_. Lucy sighed. "Fine, I'll drink it. But I don't have to like it."

His grin got wider, and she contemplated throwing her tea in his face, but she wanted to be up and out of this bed as soon as possible so she simply contented herself with saying. "I don't care if you're going to attempt to keep me in here for a year, I will _never_ like this sickly sweet excuse for tea that you've put in my cup."

"You're finishing it before you get soup though," he said, studying her with laughter in his eyes. "I don't want you thinking you can somehow sneak it past me. Now keep drinking."

Lucy sighed, but sipped away at the overly sweetened tea. "Where did you come up with this remedy?"

"Gramps said it was what my mother did when I was hurt or sick as a kid. I don't remember it though." Laxus's face was unreadable, but Lucy thought she heard a tiny hitch in his voice, and there was something lurking in the back of his eyes that she recognized.

"Your mother was a Fairy Tail mage?" Lucy asked, unable to help herself.

"I don't know," Laxus said quietly, dropping his eyes to look at his hands. "My memories of her are all a bit…vague."

"What happened to her?" she murmured, having a gut wrenching feeling, but still wanted to know before she acted on her assumptions. "Did she go with your father to Raven Tail?"

"I don't know," Laxus repeated. "Gramps doesn't talk about her, and…well, you know my father." His voice was bitter. "Even before he was kicked out, he wasn't much more than a…_jerk_ pretending at being a dad. My grandfather was the one who ended up raising me after…" His hands seemed to instinctively reach up to finger his scar.

Finishing her tea, Lucy reached out to set it on the table, realizing that her hands weren't trembling as much. Shifting slightly, she reached out to touch his scar. "How did this happen?" she asked softly. "If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to."

Laxus flinched at her touch, but said: "You saw Sabertooth's dragons, right?"

"How could I forget?" Lucy said, remembering the faces of both forms of Rogue. "But what do they have to do with your scar?"

"They're what dragon slayers refer to as _third generation_. Like Natsu, Gajeel, and Wendy, they had a dragon parent, but they also implanted lacrimas containing dragon slayer magic into their bodies, setting them apart from first generation slayers like Natsu, Gajeel, and Wendy, who only had a dragon parent."

"Okay," Lucy said, confused. "But what does that have to do with you?"

"I never had a dragon parent," Laxus said softly, feeling his scar. "But I have a lacrima inside me that gives me dragon slayer magic. I'm what is known as the second generation. There's only one other that I know of like me: Oracion Seis's Cobra. My father implanted the lacrima in me as a child, and I can't remember my mother being around after that, and my memories of the time before are fuzzy too. That might not be because of the lacrima, but if it is…"

"Oh Laxus," she said, reaching out to wrap her arms around his shoulders, but she overestimated herself and found herself toppling forward. He shifted and caught her easily, putting her back into place in her bed. For a moment, she wondered if the dolls she had played with as a child felt like this. "You know, I lost my mother when I was a child, right?"

His face was unreadable, and Lucy could _feel_ him drawing away from her and that hint of pain was still in his eyes. She pressed on, trying to draw him out, as if he was one of her teammates with whom she had fought and cried and bled with, not another member of her guild, no less precious, but not her brothers and sisters. "Surprisingly enough, as much as it hurts to have lost her, losing my father was worse. We were on shaky terms when I left for Tenrou, and I was still pretty hurt and angry with him. But all those years when we were gone, he paid my rent and sent letters and gifts on my birthday until he died. And I never got to talk with him, never got to hear what he was thinking all those years. That's what I regret the most. The last time I talked with him, I was still so hurt and angry. Now that he's gone, I can't ever hope to try and fix our relationship. That lack of closure, it hurts a lot."

Laxus pulled the covers up a little more snugly around her. "It's time for you to sleep," he said, his face carefully blank. "I'll keep your soup for another time."

She tried to fight the wave of tiredness that crashed over her, but it was impossible. He left the room, taking the lightning lacrima that had provided the light, and she felt her eyelids dropping…


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One:**

The nightmare came on her suddenly, and she found herself gasping for air with a hoarse throat, clawing at the bedcovers desperately. For a moment, she wondered if she might be sick, but the nausea subsided, leaving her trembling in her bed. If she even dreamed of leaving while she was still on bed rest, she knew Laxus would extend her time. Yesterday he had caught her trying to get to the library and given her another day. Despite her protests that it had been several days and she was ready for more than quick trips to the bathroom and one cool bath in the battered metal tub he had procured from somewhere, he was adamant. She was to stay in bed until he released her.

Lucy felt the wetness on her face that meant she was crying, but her dream had been so _real_…her trembling intensified.

When her door burst open, she shot up into a sitting position and as far into the corner as she could manage. Her hand reached first to her waist and then to the bedside table, looking for her whip, but Laxus had put it somewhere and now she was defenseless…

"Lucy?" the shape said, lightning crackling around him, and she let out a shaky breath as she realized that it was only Laxus. "Are you okay? Is someone here?" His eyes darted around the room, illuminated by his lightning, and she could see his nostrils flaring as he checked for strange scents.

"I'm f-fine," she said, forcing her body to relax and scrubbing her face with her hand. "You just startled me."

He looked at her, eyebrow raised. "There was something else though," he said gently, moving closer to her so he could get a better look. "Up until just a minute ago, you were screaming like a banshee."

Startled, Lucy looked up at him. "I was?" she said, her hand reaching up to touch her hoarse throat. "I didn't realize. Sorry. Um, you can go back to bed now. I'll be fine."

Laxus shook his head stubbornly. "You've broken out in a sweat, I can smell your tears, even if you had been able to hide them, and you _are_ afraid. I'm not leaving until I know you're fine."

With a sigh, Lucy looked towards her shuttered window. "Can I just go look at the stars then?" she asked. "It always calms me down quicker."

When she made her request, Lucy had expected him to open her shutters. Maybe take her down to the first floor where she could sit in the doorway and look at the stars. But what she didn't expect was to be scooped up, blankets and all, and engulfed in crackling lightning.

As the lightning dissipated, she saw that they were on the roof's peak, Laxus leaning against the chimney as he cradled her in his arms. Above them, the stars shone brightly, and Lucy tipped her face up as if the starlight was sunlight.

"You can let me sit on my own," she remarked quietly, eyes tracing the familiar paths in the stars. "I have enough strength for that."

She could feel him shake his head as he said: "I've seen you fall asleep on this roof before, and I'm not going to chance it again. You may sit if you wish, but you're staying within arm's reach."

After helping her arrange herself so that she was straddling the roof and leaning back against his broad chest, Laxus fell into silence as Lucy looked at the stars above them. They were quiet for a long time before he asked: "Do you know all of the names?"

"Yes," Lucy said, tears filling her eyes as she spotted constellations that she had contracted with. "My mother made a game out of it and taught me before she died. And I made my tutors include astronomy lessons so I stayed sharp. It was one of our little secrets from my father."

"Is Loke up there?" Laxus asked curiously, and she could feel him shift to look up at the stars himself.

"Now he is," Lucy said, the thought of her faithful lion causing a sharp pain in her chest. "Before Fantasia though, he was a fallen star. The constellation would have remained, but there would have been no spirit bound to it."

"What does it mean to be a fallen star?"

"It means that he was prohibited from ever returning to the Spirit World. If he had stayed in Earthland for even an hour more, he would have faded away. That's how close it came."

"How did he return then? And why was he banished in the first place?" Laxus's voice rumbled in his chest, and Lucy found herself snuggling back into it, enjoying the warmth.

"Leo's contract was originally held by the Blue Pegasus mage Karen Lillica, but she treated her spirts awfully. He replaced Aries with himself when Karen was trying to punish her, and then told her that he would stay in the human world until she released him and Aries from their contracts. Keeping gates open drains our energy, and since he hadn't come here on his own Karen kept losing magical energy and she wasn't able to summon any of her spirits. This went on for three months, which in and of itself took a huge toll on him, because he can't regenerate energy in our world."

"What happened after three months?" he asked softly.

"Karen died on a mission. One of the Oracion Seis killed her and took the other keys. Because Loke had kept his gate open and drained her energy, he was banished for being responsible for her death. He was supposed to just fade away in the human world, but he lasted for three years. After the war with Phantom Lord…" her voice caught, but she continued on. "He disappeared, quitting the guild and saying strange things, and I finally figured it out after Crux told me that he had been involved in some way with Karen. By the time I got to her grave, where he had gone, he was almost completely gone."

"If he was banished for killing the mage, how is he a spirit now? And why would he be blamed for killing her? It seems as if she brought it upon herself."

"It's taboo for a spirit to be involved in the death of his master," Lucy said softly. "The Spirit King hated to do it, but he banished him. The night he was fading, I tried and tried to force open his gate, but I couldn't. I screamed something about changing the law that had him banished, and then the Spirit King appeared. We talked, and he allowed Loke to return to the Spirit World. At first he wanted to just fade away, because he felt guilty over Karen's death, but the King told him that if he really wanted to repent, he should dedicate himself to me and my line because I had put my own life on the line to save him."

Shock colored Laxus's voice as he said: "How did you do that? I mean, if it was just trying to open his gate…"

She chuckled slightly. "I forced a lot of energy in each attempt to open his gate, plus more in an attempt to keep him from fading. And then when the Spirit King arrived, I opened every gate I had contracted with at the time. That's unheard of for a spirit mage, even in non-combat situations, even though I only could hold the gates for a minute."

"How many spirits did you have then?" Laxus asked incredulously.

"Plue, or _Nikola_: Canis Minor, Crux, Lyra, Horologium, Sagittarius, Virgo, Cancer, Taurus…" her voice dropped off. "And Aquarius. That's nine spirits, five of them being the more powerful zodiacs."

His amazement was almost tangible as he said: "You opened _nine_ gates, five of them being zodiacs, after trying to force open a gate for a banished spirit as well as attempting to keep him from fading? No wonder you were able to perform your spell the other day. If you had that much power then, you must have even more now."

"I can only summon three zodiacs at a time in battle though," Lucy said, shivering at the memory. "And even then, I nearly passed out because of it. Virgo and Loke had to return not long after because they were wounded. It was…it was the only time I can remember Aquarius actually caring enough about me to not wash me away."

"When was this?" he said, hand absently stroking her hair.

"During the Tartarus battle," she said, feeling the tears begin to burn. "Everyone else was trapped, and it was just me and one of the demons. I had to summon the Spirit King…" she consciously tried to focus her breathing and keep from crying. "After I snapped her key he came and saved them, breaking open the cube that was holding them. And then, after he had gone back, I was facing another one, and he gave me her power to use." She felt an odd smile, that was half grin and half grimace, twitch across her lips. "That was the third time I cast Urano Metria."

"I know I'm not one of your friends," Laxus said, and Lucy looked up at him, but before she could say anything, he kept talking. "But why are you here instead of with them? I was knocked out for the entire battle and I thought that all of you who had fought would be better at comforting each other. Like you and Natsu. You both lost someone…"

"They don't know," Lucy snapped, cutting him off. "I couldn't dump that on him, after he watched his father die after reuniting after all those years. How could I? And Wendy was the same. Levy was helping Gajeel, Erza was dealing with her own problems, and Mira was trying to get Elfman functioning again. He blames himself for the destruction of the guild, even though he was being controlled. Everyone had their own stuff to deal with, and I figured that if I waited a bit, I could probably just deal with it on my own and not have to bother them."

"And you've done a poor job of it," Laxus said, and she twisted in his arms, fury in her eyes. "You came here, and if it weren't for your physical appearance, you would have been unrecognizable because you were hurting so much it was crushing you. Only because you started talking to someone, either me or Mavis have you been starting to cope with this. But you're still having nightmares, if tonight's any indication. Bottling stuff up like this isn't healthy."

"You're one to talk," she hissed, eyes flashing. "You have nightmares too, and I don't see you talking about anything."

"That's because I don't need to," he snapped back at her. "I can handle my own shit without help. You're one of those people who _needs_ other people."

"Everyone needs each other," Lucy insisted, feeling frustrated with the man who sat behind her. "Your grandfather said so, the very first day I was at the guild. Humans are weak, and that's why we need guilds. So we can support each other."

"Tell that to _him_," he growled, a stray bolt of lightning speeding off into the darkness. "When everyone needed support the most, especially you, he took it away from them."

"He did what he thought was right," Lucy protested, but the lightning dragon slayer ignored her.

"Gramps did what he wanted to do, and didn't care about what was best for everyone. But I'm going to fix that, and I'm going to give everyone back their home."

"What are you going to do?" Lucy asked, wondering how they had gone from talking about fallen stars to the guild.

"I'm going to restart Fairy Tail."


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two:**

Stretching, Lucy swung her feet over the edge of her bed and listened for the sound of approaching feet. When nothing was heard, she stood up and dressed herself before clipping her whip to her belt and creeping out the door. As she came down the stairs, she froze as she saw a blonde head at the table, but without lifting his head, Laxus said: "Get down here and eat breakfast, Blondie. You start training today, and the longer you delay, the harder I'll be on you."

Resisting the urge to vault down from the staircase, Lucy hurried to join him at the table with her own plate. "You can't blame me," she said between forkfuls. "For the past eight days, if I tried to get out of bed without your express permission you added another day to my sentence."

"You say that as if you were in a cell," he grunted, taking a sip from his mug. "Your room is much better than one of those. And I could have refused to bring you books at all."

"Thank the stars for small comforts," Lucy grimaced. "I was about to get bed sores. And my training is going to be off from those days of rest."

"But your magic's completely back and you're not in pain anymore." Laxus stated. "Sounds like that's better than pushing you before you were healed."

"Well, considering that I haven't found a solution to my magic problem yet, I could have started physical training earlier," Lucy said grimly. "And meditation alone would have been fine."

"I've actually thought of something we could work on in the meantime," Laxus said, standing up to wash his dishes. "We can talk about it at lunch, but needless to say, I think I've come up with something."

Lucy immediately started asking questions, but she was forestalled by him saying: "After your physical training. You've been in bed so long that you need to take care and get a good workout in this morning. If you're distracted, you'll be no good, plus I don't trust you not to try anything on your own after your last little test."

She felt a blush rising in her face, but said quickly: "Okay, what's on tap this morning?"

"Stamina, not speed. Count how many laps around our normal running path you can do. I'll tell you when to stop. Can you remember how many you did the last time you did this?"

Nodding, Lucy prepared to head out. "Any pacing instructions?"

"Don't collapse out there, and save something for this afternoon. If I have to pick you up off the ground today, you'll spend the next two weeks in bed." He was deadly serious; she could see it in his face. Saluting cheekily, she slipped out the door and started jogging down the path, trying to fall into a comfortable pace. She couldn't remember how long Laxus had let her run the previous time, but she remembered it being a long time. The man didn't take anything lightly when it came to training.

When he finally called a halt, she was hoping he would let her go to lunch and tell her about the training for her magic, but he told her to climb three trees and take a bath before returning to the guild hall. Seeing the complaint on her face, he told her if she wanted, she could swim fifty laps and still climb the trees and bathe, but she just scowled at him and started climbing.

By the time she had finished with her bath, he had put lunch on the table for them both. Throwing herself into her seat, she started eating furiously.

As he removed her plate, she glared at him, swallowing the mouthful she had been chewing. "What's that about?" she demanded.

"You're not Natsu. Eat like a normal person, or I'll make you wait until tomorrow. I had been planning to explain over lunch, but not when you're setting out to choke yourself." Laxus returned her plate only when she nodded and didn't start talking until she ate at a reasonable pace.

"Okay, part of this has to do with what I've seen when you meditate and part of it comes from your description of how you saved Loke." Lucy looked at him curiously, but he leaned back slightly and asked: "Now, when you were opening his gate, you were basically forcing out your magical power, right?"

Lucy nodded. "It was directed at the celestial realm, specifically Leo's gate, but it was raw power. Why do you ask?"

"Are you aware that when you meditate, your magic becomes tangible to the point where it gives you an aura and creates temperature changes?" Laxus was apparently not going to answer her questions, so she just let herself be interrogated.

"No, I was not. Typically meditation involves _closing_ your eyes, so I can't account for any aura or temperature changes that may or may not occur."

"Well then, we'll have to work on that." Laxus interlaced his fingers behind his head and grinned at her. "Today, you'll be working on meditating with your eyes open."

"Are you going to tell me what this is all about at any point in time?" she asked, irritated at him for giving her only pieces of information.

The seriousness returning to his demeanor, he looked her in the eye and said: "I have a theory that through your meditation you're turning your magic into a corporal thing that you could manipulate. My best guess would be you might be able to shield with it, upping your defensive skills. If I'm right, you may also be able to use it in the same way that Fullbuster uses his maker magic, although yours has its own challenges. Namely the general state of intangibility your magic falls into. But if we're going to attempt that, we'll need to get you used to summoning that energy without meditation."

"Don't worry about that," Lucy said smugly, finishing her lunch. "I didn't need mediation when I tried to save Loke. It just takes a bit of practice to draw my magic out, and it's similar to Urano Metria in a way. Mainly when it comes to drawing out magic; the spell's incantation gives it a shape."

"Oh really now?" Laxus grinned again, a wicked gleam in his eye. "We'll see about that once we start training. I'm not going to go easy on you."

"I don't want _easy_," Lucy said, her voice firm. "I want to be good."

"You better be prepared to work hard then," Laxus taunted playfully, taking the dishes to the sink. "Good comes at a price."

"This hasn't been working hard?" Lucy questioned, sweeping her arm around the guild hall and her own body, noticeably more toned than it had been before the month of physical training.

His grin got even more wicked, if that was possible. "Oh Blondie, you haven't seen _anything_ yet."

Leading her to the clearing they used for magic practice, Laxus positioned Lucy in the center. Backing away, he said: "Call out your magic like you would in meditation. I don't care how you do it, but it might be easier if you started in typical meditation fashion."

With a roll of her eyes, Lucy dropped down onto the ground and closed her eyes. A few minutes later, she heard Laxus say: "Okay Blondie, you've got the flow of magic going. Now open your eyes."

Obeying immediately, Lucy found herself surrounded by a golden glow. Remembering the night she had saved Loke and what Laxus said about her aura, she realized that this had to be the physical manifestation of her magical power when not directed into a key or a spell. Smiling, she slowly stood up, keeping her concentration focused.

"Feeling cocky, eh?" Laxus snickered, and she saw lightning trailing on his arms and hands. "I'll see if I can't distract you. Don't worry, I won't hit you, but I'm going to try and distract you so that your focus drops."

True to his word, lightning crackled about her for the next few minutes, but she kept her power steady, realizing how similar it was to opening gates and maintaining her spirits. Her grin must have been apparent to Laxus, since he said: "I'll stop for a minute, give you a breather. Turn it off and sit down."

Sitting down next to her, he said: "Okay, you were right, you've got that down. Any theories?"

"I'm used to opening and holding open gates," Lucy said automatically. "Maintaining consistent magical flow is not a problem for me."

"If you're so confident then, let's work on the shield," Laxus said. "I don't know how you'll get it solid enough, but I'll start by sending little tiny bolts at you once you give the okay. Start sitting, but to keep you from getting fried, I'm going to set something up."

Getting up, he scratched a line in the ground with the toe of his boot. "Sit about a yard behind this and keep your shield in front of it. If my lightning gets past this line, I'll redirect it so you don't have to worry about dodging. Let me know when you're ready."

As she sat down, Lucy smiled at Laxus, glad that she was finally making progress on her magical powers. Sinking easily into her meditation, she brought out the aura and opened her eyes. After a few minutes, she had managed to force the gold glow into a rough shape on the other side of the line. She wasn't sure how solid it would be, but the only way to know was to test it.

"One shot, straight at it," the blonde mage ordered, and she flinched as it slid easily through her shield. "Give me a minute."

Focusing more magical power, she saw the barrier's color become more opaque, and she called for another shot. It too passed through, and she increased the power in the barrier again.

The cycle continued. Lucy felt a bead of sweat on her forehead and realized that she was approaching the level of magical output she had tried to use to open Loke's gate. Increasing her power once more, she poured her strength and concentration into it, willing it to prevent the bolt from reaching her.

For a split second as the bolt sped towards her and Lucy focused harder than she ever had before she could swear that she felt the Spirit Realm, but as the bolt disappeared instead of passing through her shield as it usually had, the flash went away. Rattled by the change, she lost her control over her magic and slumped forward on the ground. Laxus hurried towards her, dropping down beside her to prop her up, but before she could say anything, the sky darkened and she felt the familiar pause that could only mean one thing. Around her, time was stopping, and there could only be one cause.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-Three:**

"No," she heard herself mumble, not caring about Laxus's concerned murmurs or her own shaking body. "Nononononononono."

As the light appeared, coalescing into a massive form, she could feel the tears drip down her face as she trembled on the ground. "_Go away_!" she screamed, even though she knew it would be no use. "_I didn't call you here_!"

The light cleared, and she saw the familiar form of the Celestial Spirit King as he stood in the clearing with time paused. Lucy could feel Laxus's arms around her, but they did nothing to stop her from shaking.

"Old friend," he began, but she cut him off with a wail.

"_Which of my friends did I sacrifice this time_?" she cried, huddling on the ground. "I didn't want this! I kept them away from me so this would never happen again. Why are you _here_?"

"Old friend, you did not summon me." He said, his voice echoing across the clearing.

"Then go _back_!" she said vehemently. Laxus pulled her against him, and she fought him for a moment before turning her attention back to the Spirit King. "I don't want you here! I don't want to hurt my friends again!"

"Old friend," he began again, but this time it was Laxus who cut him off.

"Look, I don't know what's going on here, but she obviously doesn't want to see you, so maybe you should just go." His voice was gruff, but the arms that held the trembling mage in his arms were crackling with electricity.

"I can't do that. Old friend, you have done more to hurt your friends by not summoning them than you did by summoning me." The Spirit King's tone was gentle, but the rebuke was clear. "My old friend has been heartbroken since you last dismissed him."

"If I can't protect him, then I'm just using him as a shield," Lucy sobbed, clinging to Laxus's shirt. "I don't ever want to have to summon you again if the cost is losing one of my friends."

"My old friend," the Spirit King said softly. "By pushing them away, you hurt all of us. Nobody blames you for circumstances out of your control. There was nothing you could do in that situation but call upon me. Aquarius knew the risks…"

He paused a moment, and it was Laxus's voice she heard next. It sounded…off to her as he said: "Hey Lucy, you might want to look up right now…"

She reluctantly did as he said, and she collapsed against Laxus's chest. If she hadn't still been within the protective circle of his arms, she would have landed face first on the ground as she saw the familiar blue hair and scaled tail.

"_Aquarius_?" she breathed, crawling away from Laxus to stand up shakily. "Is it really you?"

"Tch," the spirit said, tossing her hair, but Lucy could see the tears in her eyes. "Did you finally get a boyfriend?"

"Is that the first thing you can say?" Lucy said, biting her lip to keep it from trembling. "I break your key and you ask me if I have a boyfriend?"

"Would you like me to be wailing and moping?" Aquarius said, inspecting her nails. "You interrupted my date. If this was any other place, you'd be in a world of hurt right now."

Lucy giggled, feeling a sense of relief. "You're okay," she whispered, and her feet carried her towards the mermaid. "You're _okay_."

She wrapped the spirit in her arms and felt her stiffen slightly, but what was more surprising was the feeling of Aquarius's arms wrapping around her in return. "You brat," Aquarius said, her voice catching. "You've had all of us worried. I chose this, and I would do it again. Of all the masters I've had, only for you and your mother would I have made the choice I did. And if I find out that after today you've been moping about and blaming yourself, I'll figure out a way to come and drown you."

Pulling away, Lucy looked into her face and saw that her most irritable spirit was serious. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"It's not so bad to be here," Aquarius said. "And since you haven't been summoning the others, Scorpio's been around more often and we've gotten proper dates. One of which I have to return to. Goodbye Lucy."

Swallowing hard, Lucy hugged her one last time before the mermaid shimmered and disappeared. Turning back to the Spirit King on wobbly legs, she said: "If you didn't come here because I summoned you, why are you here?"

"Old friend," he said sternly, and Lucy felt herself trembling again. "You have somehow managed to open a pathway into the Spirit Realm again."

"I what? Again?" Lucy spluttered incomprehensibly before collecting herself enough to say: "I don't understand."

"Just now, you used your power in such a way that you created a rift between our two worlds, allowing for a single bolt of lightning to pass through, much as you did the night you returned my old friend to the heavens. And I believe there was another time where you sent your own raw magic through, but it soon exited through another of your rips."

"Wait," Lucy said, shocked. "I opened a pathway between our worlds when I was attempting to use my magic to shield me?"

"Yes," the Spirit King said. "And you must not do so again."

"But why?" Lucy turned to see Laxus rise from the ground and approach them. "Her magic is about opening and closing doors to your realm, right?"

"The opening of the celestial gates is governed by a contract between mage and spirit. Opening gates willy nilly circumvents that contract."

"Think of the possibilities though," Lucy murmured, coming out of her initial shock. "If I made the lightning pass through to the other realm…and the other time must have been the failed Urano Metria." Tapping her finger on her chin, she said: "Where did the lightning go?"

"It nearly fried your friend Nikola, but Virgo acted in time. You cannot control your ability to open these rips, and someone will get hurt."

Lucy's mouth dropped at Plue's near miss, and made a mental note to apologize and thank Virgo in the future.

"What if she could control it?" Laxus asked suddenly. "I'm familiar with Re-quip mages who access the same pocket each time. What if she was able to confine herself to the same area of the spirit realm, and nobody would ever go there? You have a place like that, right?"

The Spirit King looked at him skeptically. "How would my old friend do something like that?" he asked.

Laxus looked stupefied. "I suppose she would have to be familiar with how to locate the place she was going to use and work on her control until she consistently opened that rip…"

"Aquarius's magic," Lucy burst out, causing the two to look at her. Turning to the Spirit King, she said: "Could you…I don't know, _tag_ the space allotted for me with a little bit of Aquarius's magic? I know I couldn't summon her or use it again, but if I could trace her magic, then I could always find the same place."

"It still is against our ways to allow uncontracted access to our realm," the Spirit King said firmly.

"Then let's make a contract." Lucy said, holding out her hand. "I swear to only open my own rips in the area specifically set aside for me by you and traceable by a tiny bit of Aquarius's magic. If I break this contract without your permission, then it is automatically null and void, as well as all other existing contracts I have with my stellar spirits."

"That is quite a contract," the Spirit King said slowly. "You are willing to risk your friends over this?"

"I have faith in my ability to keep this contract," Lucy said softly. "And if I must gamble my friends on this promise, I would have failed them by breaking it anyway and deserve to have the contracts nullified."

"You will have one week to practice with this before I will hold you to the terms of your contract." Lucy looked up at the Spirit King and saw him holding out his own hand. "After that week, the penalties you named will be in effect. Remember, you hold the happiness of many spirits in this contract. Do not treat them lightly."

"I made a promise that I would protect them." Lucy said stubbornly. "If this is what it takes to do that, so be it."

"You will be held to that promise old friend. Do not disappoint us all." The Spirit King began to fade away, but the last thing Lucy heard from him was: "Do not wait too long before you call upon your friends again. They are anxious to see you."

"I won't," Lucy said, for the first time feeling as if she had the right to summon them. "Once I get the hang of these rips, I will call them out."

"Thank you, old friend."

"Thank you Mustache Man."


	24. Chapter 24

*****Hello all! I had a few people worried last time about the terms of Lucy's deal with the Spirit King. Don't fret, she made a deal that she would ALWAYS be able to keep. She'll explain a bit during this chapter, and that should clear up any more questions. If you want more explanation though, just let me know!**

**In other news, I've got an announcement for you. When I began this fic, I had multiple ideas for what Lucy would do during the year time gap. This is just one of them. I'm currently working on writing up another of my ideas, and will begin posting that in another month or so. Oh, and I have a couple of one-shots for this fic that I'll post eventually. So there's some stuff to look forward to in the future! Hope you guys enjoy; it's a bit short, and I'm sorry about the ending...*****

**Chapter Twenty-Four:**

When the giant had disappeared, Laxus saw Lucy's legs tremble again, and he caught her before she could fall. She looked exhausted, with tear tracks down her face, but her eyes were the brightest he had seen them since she arrived on Tenrou. Even when they had been teasing each other, there had been an undercurrent of pain in her eyes, but it was gone now.

"You okay Lucy?" he asked, surprising himself with the gentleness of his tone as he helped the blonde into a sitting position.

"I will be now," she said, leaning into him almost instinctively. "I will be now."

"Who was that guy? And what happened?" Laxus shifted slightly so they were in a better position.

"He's the Celestial Spirit King, whom I last summoned by breaking Aquarius's key." Lucy said, and he could hear the sadness in her voice, but she pushed on. "When he is summoned like that, he tends to stop the passage of time temporarily so he can talk with me. And as you heard, he wanted to warn me about opening rips in the barrier between the two worlds."

Laxus nodded, smoothing her hair. "I got that part. But how exactly does it work for you? We were just trying to make a shield."

Lucy tapped her finger against her chin in thought. "I was picturing it as if the shield was a door, a solid barrier between your lightning and I. That thought, coupled with the amount of magical power I was exerting, must have been enough to open up a tiny rip between the two worlds."

"How are you going to keep yourself to just opening a space that the Celestial Spirit King confined you too? I know I mentioned about the re-quip mages, but that takes innate skill, and they are just _born_ with the knowledge."

Humming, Lucy said: "Opening a gate typically requires a key. That's the link to focus on between the two worlds. However, without a key, I need something else to focus on, which is why I asked for Aquarius's magic to be the marker. Because she and I had been contracted for so long I'm very familiar with her magic, even wielding it myself during the battle with Tartarus. Since she can no longer be summoned, using a sliver of her magic won't hurt or interfere with her."

She stretched out her hands, and he could feel her focusing, hear her breathing settle into a steady rhythm, and a golden magic circle appeared in front of them. The same scent that Laxus had just smelt while the Spirit King had been present emanated from the circle, and he could see Lucy grinning. "That's the door I'll be using."

"So you can open the door," Laxus said, looking at the circle in front of them. "What good will that do?"

"Oh, I have a few ideas," the mage said, letting the circle lapse. "I'll try them tomorrow, since I don't want to use up all my power in one day again. Hopefully you won't mind helping me, because I'll need you."

Laxus grinned. "As long as you're not going to braid my hair or use me as a training dummy, I don't mind at all."

Lucy chuckled. "You don't have enough hair to braid, but you may end up being a training dummy."

* * *

><p>The next day, they returned to the clearing after lunch and Lucy sat on the ground. "Okay, let me work on opening the gate."<p>

Laxus shook his head. "Yes, but not there. If you're going to use this in battle, you need to be able to be flexible. Open it there once or twice, and then start moving about and opening it at random. Treat it as if this was one of our agility sessions. I won't start using my lightning until you're ready, so don't worry."

Nodding, the girl stood and opened the gate a few times before she began moving around the clearing, opening it at random. After a few minutes of that, she took to the trees, and Laxus watched as she twisted through the branches like an acrobat while opening the gate randomly. He let her go on like that for a while before calling her down. "Seems like you're fine with opening it now, let's hear about what you'll use it for."

Dropping down in front of him, Lucy grinned. "That's the fun part. I don't know how bit the space allocated to me is, so I can't just store magic in there without worrying about any escaping. So I'll only be able to use the gates as a temporary shield, with the attacks absorbed being mirrored back. When I'm fighting a dragon slayer like you who eats his own element, I may be in big trouble…"

"Nope," Laxus said, crossing his arms. "Dragon slayer 101: Dragons can eat their own element, but not if it was generated by themselves. If you intercepted my roar, you would be able to send it back at me and I would take damage, although not as much as if it had been another element."

"Right," Lucy said, smacking her forehead. "Natsu ran into that problem during his fight with Gajeel."

"So what's your plan then?" Laxus asked curiously.

"I'm going to stand in one place and you're going to fire lightning at me," Lucy said matter-of-factly. "After that, I'm still working on it, but theory's not going to get me much further."

"Well, whatever you think will work best."

Taking their positions, Laxus waited for her signal before starting to send lightning bolts at her. She opened the gate, and nothing hit her, so that part of her plan was working at least. He was wondering how much lightning would she be able to take before her space became full.

As he was contemplating this, he was caught off guard and felt the familiar crackle of lightning at his back. Eyes widening, he spun around and found himself looking at a now familiar magic circle that was pointed at him, emitting lightning at his back. As he watched, it stopped emitting lightning. Spinning again, he found Lucy snickering in the middle of the clearing. "So this was your plan?"

Secretly, he was impressed. She had managed to open two gates and catch him off guard. In battle, her ability to defend and attack would be enhanced by the flexibility she was demonstrating. As she nodded, Laxus found himself saying. "Nice job Blondie. What's next?"

Lucy let the gates close and she sat down on the floor. "Next is making that more polished, but I'll need some help from a few others." She was biting her lip again, a sign Laxus had learned to recognize as her trying not to display some emotion. Curious, and worried, he asked: "Who do you need? Will you need to leave Tenrou?"

He hadn't thought of the blonde leaving Tenrou, but if she needed someone else to practice with, there would be no helping it. Laxus felt his heart sinking as he thought of a return to the solitary lifestyle he had begun with Mavis, who had been strangely absent of late. The blonde had managed to work his way under his shell, the only person other than the Raijinshu and to some extent Mira, Erza, and Cana, to do so.

"No," she said, and he felt his spirits lift. But that look was still on her face, her look of having to do something she was nervous about, and he waited for her to explain.

"I'm going to summon my spirits," Lucy said, her voice trembling but expression firm.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter Twenty-Five:**

Withdrawing her keys from the pocket of her pants, Lucy took a deep breath. Mentally, she still wasn't sure that she was prepared for this, but after her conversation with Aquarius and the Spirit King, she knew that she had to. Keeping her spirits away, especially with the cruel things she had said to Loke, was no worse than using them as a shield and treating them as possessions.

Detaching her silver keys, she looked at the five of them in her hand. Closing her eyes, she whispered: "_I know I don't have the right to do this after what I've done to you, but please, any of you who are still willing, I would like you to come out_."

For a moment, there was no response, and she felt her spirits sinking, but a brief flash of golden light brought a familiar shape.

Reaching out from where she sat on the ground, Lucy held out her hand for Plue. "Are you okay? I heard that I almost hurt you the other day." When her spirit nodded, she smiled slightly. "Well then, I'm glad you're okay. And I'm sorry that I kept you away for so long. Because of that, do you want to revise your contract?"

The spirit shook its head adamantly, throwing itself at her in a tight hug. Surprised, Lucy didn't respond at first, but as she hugged Plue back, she felt other gates opening and couldn't hold back her tears. When she finally looked up, she saw Crux, Horologium, Lyra, and Pyxis gathered around, beaming at her. "I'm so sorry guys," she said, feeling the tears drip down her face. "If any of you want to modify your contracts because of this, I understand…"

Lyra looked at the assembled spirits and said softly: "I think I speak for all of us when I say that we just want you back Miss Lucy. Our contracts remain unchanged as long as you promise to take care of yourself and never cut us off like that again."

Lucy smiled weakly and took a shuddering breath before replying. "I promise, I won't ever do that again. I just wanted to be able to protect you guys after what happened…it scared me so much, the thought of losing any of you. But what I did was the wrong way to go about it. I'm going to send you all back now, because I need to talk with the others, but I promise I'll keep you at my side."

They nodded and disappeared in a flash of light. Wiping her face with the back of her hand, Lucy returned the silver keys to her key ring and pulled off the zodiac gate keys, including Aquarius's. Placing them on the ground in an arc, she put her hands over the top of the assembled keys and said: "I know I've hurt you all, but I would like to talk. If anyone doesn't want to come, that's fine. Oh, and Scorpio? If you're on a date, stay with her. We can talk later."

She felt her magic drain, and found herself looking into the faces of her celestial spirits. Looking around the circle, she saw only two missing faces. Lucy sighed, and looked up at Capricorn. "He's really hurt, isn't he?"

Nodding, the goat spirit went down on one knee. "Miss Lucy, as another sworn to you and your line, I can only say how much it hurt to be banned from coming to your side. You have always protected us and treated us as equals, unlike many other owners we have had. All of us come when you call because we want to, and when you are distressed, we are distressed. Keeping us apart only hurts our ability to help each other."

"I know," she said softly, feeling the tears well up. "I didn't mean to hurt you at all. After Aquarius…I just didn't want to have to see any of you hurt again. So I thought the best way to do that was to keep from summoning you until I had learned enough magic to be able to protect you. It hurt, and I missed everyone, but I had made myself a promise…"

Biting her lip, she saw tears on many of her spirits faces. Even Capricorn and Taurus looked a little misty eyed. Losing control of her emotions, she reached out to Capricorn as if she had been a small child seeking a parent's comfort. He cradled her in his arms, and she felt her spirits gathering around them. Hands reached out to touch her as she cried, and she tried to grasp them, but she only had two hands.

When her tears had finished, she looked up at the spirits who surrounded her. "I'm so sorry everyone," she repeated. "If you want to rewrite our contracts…"

"We'll keep them as they are," Gemi and Mini chimed. "As long as you promise not to do this again!"

Lucy swallowed a sob and said shakily. "You are all much better friends than I was. I have to let you go now, but I promise I'll see you again soon. Capricorn, can I ask you to help with my training from now on?"

"With pleasure, Miss Lucy." Her spirits shimmered and disappeared, leaving only Virgo behind. Looking curiously at the maid spirit, Lucy said: "Thank you for your help Virgo. I really appreciate everything you've done, especially saving Plue."

"It is my pleasure Princess," she said, bowing. "Punishment time?"

"No, not this time. Is he very angry with me?"

Virgo hummed. "He is obeying your orders Princess. Brother will not come until he is called."

She sighed tiredly. "Thank you Virgo, I will call him in a minute." Nodding, the spirit bowed again and disappeared.

A large hand dropped an orange in her lap. "If you're going to summon again, eat that and drink the water I'm going to give you after. I know that using gates outside of battle takes up less energy, but you've been doing a massive amount of summoning, as well as the work with the gates you did earlier. The sugar and fluids will keep you going if you're going to summon again."

Slowly, Lucy looked up at Laxus, not caring about the tear stains on her face as she peeled the orange. "I don't know what I would do without you," she murmured quietly.

"Fall over out of exhaustion," he said casually, sitting down next to her as he placed a glass of water in front of her. "Do you want me to leave once I'm sure you've eaten?"

Shaking her head, Lucy bit into an orange slice. "No, you saw the beginning of the mess I created, you might as well see the end. You can leave if you want, but I don't mind if you stay."

"I'll just go sit over there out of the way then," Laxus said, leaving her in the center of the clearing.

Making quick work of the orange, Lucy drank the water and found herself feeling less drained. Returning all but one of her zodiac keys to her key ring, she stood and held the key out in front of her. "Open, gate of the Lion! Leo!"

A flare of gold, and the familiar form appeared in front of her, creased into a bow. He was wearing his suit and glasses, and his hair was in Leo's trademark style.

"You called, Master?" he said, his voice flat.

"Loke," Lucy began, realizing what she had done. "I'm sorry…"

"Please Master, call me Leo," he said, his voice still just as toneless. "I am a stellar spirit, not a member of Fairy Tail. What may I assist you with?"

"Loke!" she cried, rushing over to wrap her arms around him. "Please, I'm sorry. I was too cruel. Please Loke, don't…!"

Collecting herself, she stepped back, tears in her eyes. "Of course, if you want, I can renegotiate our contract. It's my fault, all of this is my fault. If you don't want me to be your master, I will accept that, but please, tell me what I can do to make this up to you."

"You don't understand," he said, and Lucy was thrilled to recognize Loke's old tone in his voice, although the bitterness and loathing nearly obscured it. "You shut yourself away from us."

"I know," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. I was just scared…"

"_We_ were scared Lucy!" he shouted, making her take a step back. "You forced us to watch you work until you collapsed, nearly killing yourself, and none of us could come out to help you. You made us choose between risking losing a contract with the best master any of us have ever found and losing _you_. I get that you were hurting and scared. We all were hurting. Tartarus scared _all_ of us because we didn't know if you would be able to beat them and none of us wanted to lose you because we were too weak. But then you shut us out, and made us watch helplessly as you fell apart. And when we tried to help? You threatened us with the only thing we held dear."

Tears were falling, not because what he was saying was harsh, but because he was _right_. "I'm sorry," she whispered over and over again. "I didn't mean to hurt you…"

"But you did," he said lowly. "You knew exactly what threats to make that would keep us away, and you _made_ them. You know that you became my only reason to live on, and you stomped all over that, keeping me from protecting you."

"I wasn't in any danger," Lucy protested weakly, but this just made his scowl darker.

"Sometimes you need to be protected from yourself," he yelled. "You may not have had enemies to fight, but you did a pretty good job of taking stupid risks on your own. If it weren't for you finding Laxus, I would have shown up sooner! When you were in Magnolia, you were falling apart, and it hurt too much to watch, but at least here you were being watched over by someone who you couldn't threaten. But the fact that you made that threat, knowing how much you mean to me…"

"I'm sorry!" She screamed, tears pouring down, her chest heaving with sobs. "I know that I was hitting below the belt. I just didn't want you to be the next key I broke. Or worse, what if it was Aries, or Virgo next? If I had to sacrifice another one of my friends…I couldn't live with myself. You guys were all I had left and I couldn't lose you too. To keep it from happening again, I needed to get stronger."

"We could have helped you train," he bellowed back at her. "Capricorn and I would have been here every day, all day, if that's what you wanted. All of us would have helped!"

"And what would I have learned?" she snapped. "You guys would still have been always in danger if I didn't learn something else. It wouldn't have done me any good."

"But we could have helped! Things might have been easier if you let us help."

"Just because I have you guys doesn't mean I need to make you do everything for me. I still need to rely on myself sometimes. I'm not saying that I don't need you, but sometimes I need to try on my own!"

"Lucy," he said, and she saw that his eyes were no longer filled with anger, but with pain. "Watching you, each day, hurt more than living for three years in your world after Karen died. Seeing you collapse after casting Urano Metria and not being able to go to your side almost broke me. If he hadn't appeared when he did, I would have willingly disobeyed you and returned to your side, even if I had to become a fallen star again. But you made me watch as you nearly destroyed yourself. That type of pain and fear doesn't go away."

"What can I do?" Lucy whispered. "What can I do to make it up to you?"

"Not doing it again is a start," he said firmly. "But taking a bit more care of your life might help too. If you value us, you should value yourself."

Collapsing at his feet, Lucy sobbed brokenly. "I'll do anything Loke, please…"

"Lucy," he said gently. "This hurt can't be fixed by doing anything. I still trust you with my life, and I would still die for you if you asked it of me, but only time will allow us to go back to how things used to be. Don't worry, I'll always be there when you call, but I need my own time to heal from this." Bending down, he kissed the top of her head. "Your magic is running low again. I'm going to go back for now. Goodbye Lucy, and take care until you call me again."

He disappeared in a flash of gold, and she pressed her forehead to the ground and cried.

*****Hi everyone! I don't have too much to say about this one, other than please don't kill me for the way things turned out. I'd love to hear your thoughts and reactions, especially on this chapter, so feel free to let me know. I love hearing from readers. You guys are the reason I do this! Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Look for the next update sometime Wednesday.*****


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter Twenty Six:**

During their entire conversation, Laxus had sat quietly with his back against a tree at the edge of the clearing. Loke had acknowledged him with a nod at the end of their conversation, but the lightning dragon slayer was still shocked at how the two of them had interacted. He supposed that they had both hurt and been hurt by the other's actions, but Lucy seemed shattered on the ground.

_That's always the hardest part_, he thought as he crossed over to pull her into his arms. _Once you break their trust, it's a long hard road to get it back._

Cradling her against his chest, he rubbed her back as she sobbed into his shirt. "I'm sorry Lucy," he murmured into her hair. "I'm so sorry."

When it looked as if she would be crying for a while, he scooped her up in his arms and started walking her back to their temporary home. "You and I always seem to end up like this, don't we?"

She cried even harder, and he felt each sob tug at his heart. He knew all too well the heartbreak of realizing that your friends no longer trusted you. It had haunted his steps until the first time he had returned to Tenrou when Hades was attacking. Only then did he start to redeem himself in the eyes of his guildmates.

Reaching the guild hall, he took a seat on the bench and cradled Lucy's shaking form. He knew that she was just tired and shaken from her encounter with Loke or he would have taken her up to her room. She needed a person more than she needed sleep.

"Well you've had an interesting few days, I see." Laxus looked up to see Mavis standing in the doorway.

"And where have you been?" he snapped lowly, not wanting to disturb the blonde in his arms.

"Research and checking on a few things. What did I miss?" Mavis's green eyes scanned over them, almost as if she was able to see through them.

"She made progress on her magic yesterday, and we did some experimenting today." Laxus said, keeping his description as short as possible. He didn't want to hurt Lucy by putting her through an extended rendition of the encounter with her spirits.

"What type of progress? I haven't been able to figure anything out for her. Her keys are back on her belt; did she begin summoning again?"

"Yesterday we were trying to see if we could turn her manifested magic into a solid shield, and she ended up opening a rip into the Spirit Realm. Because of the intrusion, the Spirit King paid us a visit, which scared her, although she did get to see Aquarius there. Today we tried to focus in on this ability to create doors into the Spirit Realm and she was able to successfully use it to both shield herself from unwanted attention as well as attack. From what I can tell, now that she has this alternative method of fighting, she feels comfortable summoning her spirits again, which she did today."

"Then why is she in tears?" Mavis questioned, her eyes sweeping over the shaking form in his arms. "Shouldn't the reunion be a happy one?"

"Stop pretending Mavis," Laxus snapped. "You have a pretty good working theory. I figure you've known this since the beginning. And I know that you were eavesdropping the last time she summoned Loke. How can you make me say it for you?"

"Because sometimes we have to say the things nobody wants to hear," the ghost said. "It's part of being a friend, let alone…"

"Stop," he hissed, covering Lucy's ears. "I know that guild masters have to say things that hurt. My own grandfather _disowned_ me for a while there. But I'm not going to drag her through it all over again for your satisfaction. She's in enough pain right now."

"I take it the reunion was unpleasant then?"

"You know what, First? Back off." Laxus spat. "She doesn't need this from you right now. I know that you're teaching me, but don't capitalize on her misery. One of her best friends just showed her how much it hurt when she drove him away, and that hurt _her_ because she was trying to protect him. So back off and leave her be."

"No."

Laxus and Mavis both looked at the girl in shock. Somewhere in their argument, she had stopped crying, although her eyes were still bright with tears, and she was now sitting there looking between them. "No," she repeated.

"What do you mean Lucy?" Laxus whispered, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

"Don't sugar coat for me. Don't protect me. I was the one who screwed up here, and I don't deserve the luxury of having both of you tiptoe around me." Her eyes flashed at both of them. "I said cruel things to a man who would rather die than make me unhappy, threatened to forcibly remove him from my presence when I knew that I was possibly the only thing that he lived for, and the only reason I could make such threats was because I knew him better than anyone else. He trusted me with himself. I betrayed that trust. The fact that he came when I requested today amazes me, but I don't deserve anything more than what he said. Actually, I deserve a lot worse. So say anything you want to me; it's only what I deserve."

She was sitting on the bench, an inch away from leaning into him, her body shaking with suppressed sobs, but her back was ramrod straight, and her jaw had a determined set that reminded him of Erza, Grey, and Natsu. Laxus couldn't help but be impressed with the inner strength he was showing, and he could see Mavis was stunned too. They all let a moment pass in silence after Lucy's outburst, and then she stood and moved towards the kitchen.

"What are you doing Lucy?" Laxus asked, trying to understand.

"You made lunch, so I'm going to make dinner. It's as we agreed upon after we moved in. Equal sharing of chores and meals." Lucy reached for a pot and placed it on the stove. "I'm going to make curry. It will take a little bit, but we ended training early. Would you like some tea while you wait?"

Her voice still caught, and the hands that reached for the canister of tea were definitely trembling, but the look in her eyes was so vivid it took his breath away. The guilt and the pain were there, and he knew how they stung, but they were overwhelmed by the determination to make things right and face her mistake head on. For a moment, Laxus wondered if he could do that, if he could have done that, but he pushed it away. Such things were in the past.

*****You are all wonderful people! I'm sorry this chapter's a bit short, but later today I'll be releasing a side chapter! I have another one-shot that will probably be out Friday as well. Thank you so much for all of the reviews and support!*****


	27. Chapter 27

*****Sorry guys! This was supposed to go up yesterday, along with a one-shot, but real life got in the way of this chapter, and I'm not satisfied with the one-shot yet. Bear with me on that!**

**In other news, we're about to start a new stage in this story. We've pretty much put Lucy back together again, now it's Laxus's turn. The next few chapters may be a bit...surprising, but please, don't fret. I'll fix everything shortly, I promise. As always, I love hearing from you guys, and it's your support that keeps me writing! Even critiques help me think about where I'm going/what I'm doing.*****

**Chapter Twenty-Seven:**

Lucy sat in the middle of the clearing as Capricorn paced around her. She listened to his instructions as she meditated, focusing on controlling the flow of her magic. Now that she was going to be opening the empty gate, she was trying to minimize the power necessary so that she would still have plenty on hand. It had been a month since she had reunited with her spirits, and every once in a while she wished that Laxus was still training her. When it came to her magic, he was much less demanding than Capricorn, although he did lack familiarity with it. Each day she returned to their temporary guild hall tired and dirty, but she could almost feel herself getting stronger.

Capricorn had her call out one other spirit each day, slowly working her into combat situations so she got used to timing the opening and closing of the empty gate, as well as combatting different fighting styles. At first she was against using her spirits as extremely intelligent training dummies, but after Virgo spent two hours grinding her into the dust because she was going easy on her, Lucy got a lot less squeamish and accepted their assurances that they were perfectly willing to fight against her in practice. Aries had said one day: "You don't want to hurt us, we all know that. And practicing with us means that we'll get hurt less later on. So don't worry, come at us with all you have."

So Lucy trained, and ate, and slept, and sometimes she noticed that Laxus was more and more distant, but she usually didn't have the time or the energy to really do much more than eat with him and occasionally run with him in the morning depending on what he had planned for them. She missed their easy banter and childish pranks, but she was making real progress for once, like she hadn't made since she first unlocked her second origin.

When she had reached whatever target Capricorn had set for her, Lucy stood up and brushed herself off before grabbing her water bottle. Little useful things like that had been appearing in her room ever since she had reconnected with her spirits, and Lucy had noticed that all of her dirty clothes disappeared and were replaced with clean ones. She tried to tell Virgo that it wasn't necessary, but the maid spirit was so good at playing deaf whenever Lucy brought it up that she eventually stopped trying. Caring for those little things was just how her spirits showed they cared.

Returning to the center of the clearing, Lucy looked towards Capricorn. "Who's coming out today?" she asked, bouncing a bit on the balls of her feet in readiness. So far, they had mainly worked on countering magical offensives with Aries, Virgo, Scorpio, and Gemini. Gemini's ability to copy itself into her various guild mates gave a greater variety to their practices, with Capricorn drilling her on the strategy used against each opponent. He had been hinting that they would switch to more combat oriented spirits soon, and Lucy was excited.

"Nobody. I want to get a baseline with you, so I asked someone to join us. He should be here in a minute."

Lucy stopped bouncing in shock. He had asked _Laxus_ to spar with her? Sure, she had sparred against him during her first days on Tenrou, but that had been an abject failure. He hadn't even needed to exert himself then, and he was familiar with the majority of her powers so she didn't have the element of surprise. Capricorn must have read some of this in her face because he said: "Don't worry, he's not going to go all out. I just want to get an idea of what you can do against an opponent you know and who knows you. Think of it as a strategy exercise as well."

Sitting back down, Lucy began to think of every detail she knew about Laxus's fighting style. She knew that he had vast reserves of magical power, as well as his overwhelming physical presence. As a dragon slayer, his body had immense durability. Faintly she remembered a conversation between Natsu and Gajeel right after Fantasia where Gajeel had said that the fight had ended in a draw between the three dragon slayers, and that had been years ago. If Laxus had improved at the same rate that Natsu had, Lucy was certain that she didn't stand a chance against the oldest dragon slayer.

Steadying her breathing, she refocused on her previous fight with him. He had started out by keeping her at a distance, but she had her Flueve d'etoiles to defend and attack with, although that worked best when unexpected. Laxus had also seen her use the whip, which put her at further disadvantage. What she could do was open multiple small gates, allowing for one absorbed attack to be split into smaller fractions, although that decreased the power of each individual fraction. His lightning would also be relatively weak against him, even though he couldn't just eat it to regain power…

Her strategizing was cut short as Laxus walked into the clearing. Nodding at her, he turned to Capricorn and said: "What are the rules for this?"

The spirit beckoned Lucy closer. "You will spar against each other until I stop, or there is a clear winner. All magic and weapons are fair game, however you must keep your opponent's safety as your highest priority. Maiming or severely injuring your opponent is not allowed. Are there any other questions?"

"What are the boundaries for this fight?" Laxus asked, looking at Lucy.

"You must stay within the clearing, although the trees at the edge are still within bounds." Capricorn looked at both of them. "Are you two ready?"

They nodded, and he sent them to opposite sides of the clearing. "On my call. Three, two, one, you may begin."

Laxus braced himself and Lucy recognized the stance, even as he opened his mouth. "Virgo," she called softly, hoping that his hearing wouldn't pick it up. "Dig a hole right under me and catch me as I fall. Time it right so that I fall right when his roar would hit me."

Extending her hand as if she was going to open the gate and absorb the attack, Lucy stood her ground until the roar was upon her, and then she felt the hole open under her feet. Caught by Virgo, she had the spirit tunnel to a point beyond Laxus, filling in the hole behind them so he would have no idea where Lucy had gone. Safe in the trees at his back, Lucy dismissed Virgo and watched him, hoping that his sense of smell wouldn't be able to find her.

Lightning crackled down his skin as he paced a small area on his side of the clearing. Apparently bored of waiting for her, he sent a wave of lightning across the entire clearing. Opening several small gates into her space in the celestial realm, Lucy collected a fair amount of the lightning and opened three gates above his head. She could hear him growl as his shoulders and chest were hit, but he brushed it off. Already moving through the trees, she tried to keep her breathing as quiet as possible, her footsteps on the branches minimized.

"I know you're out there Blondie," he said, and she could see him pivot in place to sample the air. "I can smell strawberries. If I can't see you, there are only two places you can be."

Bracing himself, he opened his mouth. "Lightning Dragon's Roar!"

Lucy jumped out of the tree she was standing in, Virgo catching her in a recently dug depression. Before she had dismissed the spirit earlier, Lucy had asked her to be ready for an attack that would drive her out of the trees. But before she could retreat, Laxus was slamming his fist into the ground. "Lightning Dragon's Fist!"

Since most of the space between them was dirt, not much of the electricity carried through, but Lucy nearly yelped when a tendril zapped her ankle. Laxus disappeared from his original position and appeared next to her in an instant.

"Virgo, go!" Lucy shouted, bringing out her whip. As the spirit vanished, Lucy caught Laxus's incoming fist with her whip and sent him careening towards a nearby tree, but he rotated and pushed off towards her. Ducking, Lucy rolled and came back to her feet as he did the same. Feeling a grin settle onto her face, she shimmed up the nearest tree and began jumping through the branches, trying to put some distance between herself and the lightning dragon slayer.

Lightning crackled next to her, and she nearly swore at him. _Using his teleportation like that is just cruel!_ Letting go of the branch she was holding, she fell, lashing out with her whip and swinging herself into another tree. Quickly and carefully she made her return to the clearing landing in a crouch. "Aries!" she called, and the timid spirit appeared next to her. "Use wool wall to blockade me in here for a minute," she whispered. "I need some time for this one to work."

Almost immediately Lucy found herself surrounded in pink wool. "Thanks. Now, go make several of these around the clearing. If he finds you, go back to the spirit realm." As the spirit scampered off, Lucy reached for the familiar key that would always have a place next to the broken one. "Scorpio!"

Appearing immediately, the spirit grinned cheekily at Lucy. "Just so you know, she wants me for a date in a little bit."

Lucy grinned back. "I'll have you back in time," she said. "Though, now that she can't sweep me away for it, I'm a little less scared of interrupting."

"She'll find a way," he warned, looking around them. "So, Laxus today?"

Nodding, Lucy said: "Aries is buying us a bit of time with decoys, but he'll get here soon. I need your Sand Buster stored in my empty gate, and then another one to blow Aries's wall apart when he shows up."

She opened the gate, and he directed the sand attack into it. Closing the gate, she knew that she didn't have much time before the magic dissipated or Laxus found her. Lucy crouched down next to Scorpio, waiting for the familiar feeling of Aries's gate closing. It didn't take long. Laxus's roar was audible, and Lucy braced herself as the wool wall was swept away. "Scorpio, now!" she cried.

The sand erupted from his tail, and she clambered back into the trees, moving quickly as she tried to find Laxus's figure in the blowing sand mixed with lightning. Finding him as he stood in the center, braced against the onslaught, she opened the gate right above him, directing the magic she had stored there to hit him.

Jumping down, she knelt as close to the ground as she could without sacrificing her ability to move when needed. She had played the majority of her cards; it was Laxus's turn to lead this fight.

His retaliation was swift and unexpected. She had two seconds notice before his attack hit: thin bolts of lightning that reminded her of Rufus's memory make that had decimated the field during the first day of the Grand Magic Games. Opening her gates, she tried to shield herself, but the lightning moved away from the gates and targeted her body.

Lucy bit down on the inside of her cheek as she was hit over and over again, the electricity jolting her body, sending her out of her crouch and sprawling among the sand on the clearing floor. She twitched and shook as she tried to hold back the scream that wanted to emerge. This was nothing compared to the power she knew Laxus had. While being one of the more unpleasant attacks she had endured, this was nothing compared to Minerva, Gajeel's brutal beating, or what she suffered at Kain Hikaru's hands here on Tenrou. Even his Thunder Palace was stronger than this. Losing her control as one particularly strong shock struck her, she screamed…

"STOP!" Capricorn thundered from somewhere nearby, and she was grateful for him calling the halt when he did. Not trusting her limbs, Lucy lay on the ground trembling as the electricity ran through her system. He had held back, she knew, but this still was _painful_. Slowly making her way onto her hands and knees, she coughed, and blood spattered on the ground. She must have bit hard enough to open up her cheek.

A clap of thunder sounded, but when Lucy looked up, only Capricorn was still in the clearing. Pushing herself upright, she spat out more blood and stood on shaky legs, muscles still twitching. _You could be burned_, she reminded herself. _Natsu's flames hurt worse_. _And Gajeel's iron leaves bruises. Twitchy nerves are nothing. A little bit of rest and you'll be fine…_

She felt herself falling, but before she could hit the ground, she was caught by a familiar pair of arms and a voice was saying: "Punishment time, Princess?"

Chuckling weakly, Lucy looked up at Virgo. "Not now. I'm a little unsteady. Thanks for catching me, although I don't think I'll be able to sustain you for much longer. Capricorn's not fighting, and I didn't have you or the others out for very long, but I still did a lot of work today."

Virgo helped her stand up and they slowly walked over to where Capricorn was waiting.  
>"I opened my own gate Princess, so you don't need to worry. For as long as you need me, I'll be here."<p>

When they reached Capricorn, Lucy grinned weakly up at him. "How'd I do?"

He smiled briefly. "You showed good initiative and excellent agility. However, most of your magic is defensive in nature, so your offense was weak. Laxus let you keep the distance between you two, or that fight would have ended differently. We'll work on offensive techniques starting tomorrow. For the rest of the day, you should rest. Be here tomorrow as soon as you are finished with lunch. I shall dismiss myself now."

"Thanks Capricorn, I really appreciate it." Lucy murmured as he began to fade away. "Thank the others for me, please?"

Leaning on Virgo, Lucy headed for the spring that she used to bathe in. Her spirit saw her settled in the water before disappearing and reappearing with fresh clothes and her toiletries. Lucy soaked in the water for a bit, feeling the trembling of her muscles stop, and then she went ahead with her bath.

Clean and no longer shaking, Lucy and Virgo returned to the guild hall where Mavis waited for them at the door. "What happened during your training?" the First Master of Fairy Tail asked, her eyes serious.

"I can handle things from here Virgo," Lucy said, hugging her spirit. "Thanks for all of your help. I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yes Princess," the spirit said as she returned to the spirit world. Lucy turned back to Mavis. "Laxus and I sparred. He left after Capricorn called a halt."

"You're not hurt?" Mavis asked, following Lucy into the guild hall.

"Not anything more than sore muscles and maybe a couple of bruises and scratches. I've had a lot worse." Lucy checked her watch and decided to start dinner. Surely Laxus would be hungry by the time she finished.

"Tell me about your fight," Mavis ordered, and Lucy complied, walking her through each attack and counter attack. She found the ghost's interest in her training odd, but she remembered someone saying something about how Mavis had been known as the Fairy Tactician. Perhaps she just wanted a new scenario to analyze?

When Lucy reached the end of her fight where Laxus had taken her down with her lightning, Mavis's face became unreadable. Lucy wanted to ask what the First was thinking, but she knew better than to try and ask her questions when her face looked like this. Laxus had tried enough times during their time on the island and been successfully stonewalled that Lucy had learned to let things go when Mavis was like this.

"Where is Laxus now?" the First asked suddenly.

"I don't know," Lucy admitted, stirring the pot on the stove. "He left the clearing before I stood up, and I haven't seen him since. He's probably swimming."

"Hmmm," Mavis said, her face still unreadable. "If he doesn't come in for dinner, don't wait for him. Don't wait up either. He might be…taking some extra training."

Shrugging, Lucy said: "If you say so. I'll be here either way."


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter Twenty-Eight:**

He didn't come in for dinner, but thanks to Mavis, she expected that.

He also wasn't there when she finally gave up and went to bed.

In the morning when she woke, the sun was already over the horizon and she had missed a good hour of her training because Laxus hadn't woken her in the semi-darkness. She chose one of their normal morning routines to do, expecting to see him at lunch and get a scolding for being so dependent on him, but he wasn't there either.

Lucy started asking Horologium to wake her in the mornings, and Virgo would join her for morning workouts. From occasional things the maid spirit mentioned, Lucy could tell that Capricorn and Loke were planning her schedule, with Loke structuring the morning and Capricorn the afternoon. She occasionally wished that she hadn't messed up her relationship with Loke so that he would join her in the mornings. Virgo was a good friend and one of her strongest spirits, but it wasn't the same as having her Fairy Tail nakama around. Other than Mavis and Tenrou, Loke was her last tie to Fairy Tail.

Mavis began joining her in the evenings, and Lucy noticed that she was watching her training, because every time she sparred with her spirits, Mavis would hold a strategy discussion that evening. Her illusion magic came in handy as she turned the tabletop into an exact replica of the clearing or wherever Capricorn had her fighting. Now that he was focusing on melee strategies, she fought on varied terrain once she had mastered whatever he was teaching in the clearing. She found herself working mainly with Taurus, who was the biggest spirit she had, working on disabling and disarming.

Taurus was not the only spirit she summoned though. Cancer worked with her for a week to fine-tune her agility. She partnered with Gemini who would randomly transform into one of her former guild mates, although it wasn't like fighting with the true person. Once or twice Loke worked with her on basic melee techniques that Taurus didn't feel comfortable teaching, but she rarely saw him. Lucy understood though. What she had said to him was not something that a simple _I'm sorry_ could fix. She would wait for him and follow his cues.

* * *

><p>Mavis waited until Lucy fell asleep before she let her cheerful mask fade away. It had been six weeks since their spar, and Laxus hadn't returned. The First Master had tried to replace Laxus's presence, and she knew that Lucy's spirits were trying as well, but a ghost and celestial beings weren't substitutes for true human interaction.<p>

A golden glow appeared across from her, signaling the arrival of one of Lucy's spirits. When it disappeared, she saw Loke sitting where Lucy had been before. As if she was expecting it, which in a way she had, the First said: "She misses you, you know."

"She misses a lot of people," the lion said lowly, looking at his hands. "Natsu, Erza, Grey, Wendy, Happy, Charle, Mira, Levy, Cana…even Laxus, Bixslow, Evergreen, and Freed. I'm just one of many."

"The days when you've come out to work with her, those are the days she's smiled the most." Mavis commented idly, watching his reaction. "In the mornings, when she comes down and sees Virgo waiting for her, she seems to always be hoping it is someone else, although I don't know if it's you or Laxus she's hoping for."

Loke growled. "She should just ignore him. He's obviously not too attached, despite his talk of wanting to be the next master." His hands briefly gripped the surface of the table so hard that his knuckles turned white before he let go and folded them in his lap.

Raising her eyebrows at his little display of temper, Mavis said: "He has his own demons to deal with, although I am disappointed in the way he has chosen to deal with them." She sighed. "Those two idiots can't realize that they need each other and are just making it harder for themselves."

"You're as bad as Mira," Loke said offhand, glancing up towards the room where Lucy slept. "If she was here, she'd squeal something about blonde haired children."

Mavis rolled her eyes. "He said that too. But what neither of you seem to realize is that what I'm talking about is the two of them healing each other, not falling in love with each other. However, if they do fall in love, I'm not going to stand in their way. If that's what they want, why should I tell them anything different?"

"Laxus hasn't been serious about a girl in his life," Loke said shortly. "She cares too much to be a play toy. You better hope that they don't fall in love, because if they do, she's going to be hurt again. I would guess you don't want that on your conscious."

She looked at him. "And you've been serious about a girl?"

"Just the one," he said softly, glancing up again at Lucy's door. "But we'll never work out. So I'll gladly serve her while I can, and remember her when she's moved on."

"Is it against the laws for a spirit to be involved with his master?" Mavis asked curiously. "We don't have too much information about the rules that govern your matters."

"It's not against the law," he said quietly. "But it's not a romantic love, at least not for me. She's my queen, and I will serve her without pause for the rest of my existence. The worst fate I could suffer would be to be removed from her side. I came so close to it, and it frightened me beyond belief. Part of me is still afraid that if I let myself go back to the place I had been before…before Tartarus, it will turn out to be just a dream and I'll have everything nearly snatched away from me again. If that happened…I don't know if I would be able to cope next time."

"Trusting your entire being to another person is a scary thing," Mavis murmured softly, not really looking at the lion in front of her. "Sometimes you get hurt. But nobody can make you trust again but yourself. And sometimes, trusting the other person is worth the risk of losing it all."

"What would you do Master?" he said suddenly, drawing her attention back to him. "Please, I want your advice."

Shaking her head, Mavis said gently: "I'm not your Master, even though you still bear your guild stamp. Lucy is, if you'll have her. And you have to decide for yourself how you want to move forward, or if you want to stay motionless in the same place. But remember, she's still suffering too. From what I can tell, she truly regrets what she said, and is giving you the space you need. While she wants you to come back, she won't want you to come back only to be unhappy. You are very lucky to have contracted with her. She would do what makes her spirits happiest, even if it hurts her."

Before Loke could say anything, the crackle of lightning was heard outside and the door opened moments later. Laxus stood there, his bag in his hands and a faint crop of blonde stubble on his cheeks. He looked at the pair at the table before heading up the stairs.

Mavis watched Loke struggle to decide what he was going to do. She saw anger, rage, fear, sadness, happiness, and confusion dance across the lion's face, and she wondered how much of it he was aware of. Certainly not all of it.

"Laxus?" came a sleepy voice from overhead, causing the spirit and the ghost to freeze. They couldn't see what Laxus was doing, but they heard Lucy's door opening. "Is that you?"

He sighed. "Yes, it's me. Go back to bed blondie."

"I'm glad," she murmured as the door closed behind her. "I missed you."

Only when they heard his door shut did Mavis and Loke feel comfortable resuming their conversation. "I'm surprised she woke up," Loke said, his voice soft. "He was pretty quiet about returning."

"She's been sleeping lightly since he left," Mavis said. "But you should probably get back to the Spirit Realm before she wakes up enough to wonder why she can feel you here. Unless of course, you want to talk with her."

"Thanks for talking with me Master," he said as the glow enveloped him once more. "And thanks for taking care of her."

"Think about what I said."

"I will."


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter Twenty-Nine:**

Lucy had thought when Laxus came back, everything would go back to normal. He would train her in the mornings, every so often they would spar together, and in the evenings they would at least sit in companionable silence even if they didn't talk. There was something reassuring about just knowing that your nakama was there, even if he wasn't really talkative.

But for the two months following his return from his rather abrupt departure, Laxus still wasn't really there. He showed up right on time for food if she was making dinner, taking his plate with him and returning it, washed and dried, in the morning. If he was cooking, he left her plate on the table and was gone by the time she arrived. Sometimes she entertained thoughts of throwing it at his door, but she knew that it wouldn't have any effect since he wasn't there. The only time he had slept in the guild hall was the very first night he had returned.

Those first few nights she had just assumed he would come back in a bit, whenever he was ready, but when she peaked into his room one day he wasn't there. None of his stuff was, and the furniture that was left had a solid layer of dust. She tried to ask him where he was staying, but he had taken to wearing his sound pods with the music so loud that she could hear it if she stood close enough. His main method of communication was grunting.

She could tell that Mavis disapproved; the celestial mage often caught the ghost staring off in the direction Laxus had just been spotted with her lips pursed and a stern look on her face as if she wanted to go after the dragon slayer and give him a piece of her mind. When she caught Lucy watching her, the First would look at her as if she was expecting something, although Lucy didn't know what.

Two months of silence, and Lucy was at a breaking point. She knew her spirits were aware of her foul mood and trying to help her out of it, but she was sick of being ignored. Even the presence of Loke at her afternoon training session couldn't keep her from being irritated.

It was her turn to make dinner, and Lucy was pretty sure that there wasn't a soul on Tenrou Island, perhaps even in Hargeon, that wasn't aware of her bad mood after the amount of muttering and pot banging there had been during the preparations. Aries had appeared while she was dicing an onion, turned pale at the amount of killing intent with which Lucy was using the knife, and returned to the spirit realm, muttering apologies as she went.

When Laxus came skulking in through the front door, he grunted in surprise as the knife she threw sheared through the end of one of his sound pods. Looking at her, he didn't have enough time to react as his plate came sailing through the air to land in his face with a wet squelch.

By the time he had recovered, lightning was crackling around his arms, and Lucy could tell that he was irritated at being caught off guard. Flexing a finger, he shot a bolt of lightning at her plate as it lay on the table, but she intercepted it with a portal and sent it right back at him.

This time he growled, but she stood her ground. At least he was acknowledging her instead of just ignoring her all the time. She was sick of him pretending that she didn't exist.

"What was that for Blondie," he rasped hoarsely, as if his voice hadn't been used recently.

"Maybe it will teach you not to be a jerk," she snapped, keeping her eyes locked with his. "I'm sick of this crap."

"Nobody _asked_ you to come here," he growled, reaching for the volume control on his sound pods.

She threw another knife, just skimming his fingers. "Don't you dare," she threatened, retrieving another of their kitchen knives from the counter where she had placed them. "The next time your finger goes near that thing, I aim for blood."

"What do you want from me Blondie?" he said, folding his arms over his chest. "I just came to get dinner."

"And that's all you do anymore," she cried, waving the knife she was holding. "If you didn't need to get your food, you wouldn't see me at all. Is it too much to ask for a bit of conversation?"

"If you wanted conversation, you should have gone with one of your girl friends," he muttered, attempting to look around her towards the stove.

"The only food I prepared is on my plate or on the floor right now. So you either talk to me, or you go to bed hungry. And I didn't want to go with one of my girl friends, I came here to Tenrou. Now are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?"

"I don't need to tell you anything," Laxus grunted, turning to leave again. Lucy threw her third knife of the evening, placing it quivering in the solid wood of the door by the handle. Slowly, Laxus turned to face her, a dark look on his face. "What the hell, Blondie?"

"You can shut up and listen and when I'm done you can think about what you're going to do," she growled back, reaching for yet another knife, mentally thanking Gemini for transforming into Erza and teaching her how to throw blades. "I'm sick and tired of dealing with your shit. So sit down and pay attention. And remember, you even attempt to turn up your sound pod, I aim for blood."

Lightning began to spark dangerously around Laxus, but Lucy was unfazed. "You shoot that off in here, there are only a few options for you. One, I take it from you. Two, I turn it on you. Three, I guard myself and you've just wasted your strength. Four, I deflect it, and you're the one fixing the damage. So get yourself under control, Sparky."

Grumbling, he dropped onto the end of the bench and looked at her, anger in his eyes. She met his look with one of her own. "Good, now we can talk like normal human beings." Lucy sat down on the other bench, placing the knife where it would be easily grabbed. "I'll start."

"I'm not your mother, I'm not your sister, and I am not your wife or your girlfriend. I'm just your nakama and I understand that you don't have to let me approve of your plans. But because I'm your nakama, I feel quite justified in telling you that you're an S-class _jerk_ who needs a crash course in dealing with people. If you're going to train somebody, or even just live in the same building, you don't just up and leave without any notice. At least leave a note or something. And for six weeks? You couldn't have checked in to say that you were still alive or anything? Don't you tell me it's none of my business either, you made it my business when you took me in and started training. The very least you could have done was be a decent human being and give me a reason why you had to leave."

"But why stop there? We can talk about how you came back two months ago and since then you've conveniently found another place to stay on an island where only one other _living_ person resides. Sure, you're keeping up with your chores when it comes to food prep, but is it too much trouble to say: 'Hey, how was training? Wow, that bruise looks painful. Sit down and eat, you'll feel better in the morning.' And that's ignoring the fact that you abandoned my training, pushing the burden onto my spirits instead. It's not like I haven't tried to reach out to you, to have a conversation once in a while, but I got tired of being snarled at. So, are you going to tell me what the hell happened that sent you running for the hills and then pretending I didn't exist?"

Pushing back from the table, Laxus headed for the door, but she was already there, gripping the front of his shirt in her fists. "You can't leave and you won't be able to teleport without taking me, so you better start talking if you want to get out of the building any time soon."

With ease, he removed her hands and went to remove the knife still embedded in the door before she could try to use that against him, but she shoved him away from her and the door, back into the middle of the room. Laxus tripped on the bench, toppling over backwards, and she fairly flew at him, landing on his chest. "Stop being a…a bloody _coward_," Lucy hissed, her eyes dark with anger. "You're just running away. If I couldn't do that, why the hell should I let you?"

"You could have run all you wanted to Blondie," he spat, infuriated by her accusation. "You just didn't."

"What do you think not going with anyone when they asked was?" she hissed. "Or coming to Tenrou? I didn't want to tell anyone about Aquarius because saying it made it real. And wasn't my refusal to use my keys a way of running from my problems? But you and Mavis and the Spirit King kept pushing and pushing and I told you and I summoned them and you made me pull myself out of the hole I was letting myself sink into. That's what nakama do for each other. But you're always running and lying and hiding just like a coward and I don't like seeing my nakama like that. What are you so afraid of?"

"You," he snapped.

Caught off guard, Lucy stumbled off him, rising and tripping over the fallen bench herself, skidding up against the table leg. "What are you talking about?"

"Didn't you want to know what I was so afraid of?" He said, standing up and looming over her. "I'm afraid of you."

"I'm not Erza," she said. "Or Natsu, or…"

"You couldn't hurt me." Laxus chuckled lowly, setting the bench to rights and dropping down on it. Staring at his hands, which still flickered with traces of lightning, he murmured: "I'm afraid of hurting you."

"I'm not afraid of you," she hissed at him, reaching for her whip. "You wouldn't hurt me."

"Haven't I already?" he growled, grabbing her arm and dragging her out from under the table. His grasp was stronger than anything she had felt before, and she felt as if he could easily snap her wrist. Catching the train of her thoughts, he chuckled again, a grim smile spreading across his lips. "Yeah, I know you understand what I mean. I could snap your wrist with a well-placed movement. But you're right, I wouldn't do that. Not here, like an abusive boyfriend or an intruder. No, where I hurt you is on the training field. Last time I fried you beyond what was necessary. You know why? Because I lost control and you became the enemy, not the girl I was training. _That's_ when I'm dangerous. And I'm not going to hurt you again because I can't control myself."

Lucy struggled in his grasp, but it was unyielding. "You know what? Gajeel kicked me into a damn _wall_ for no other reason than he was bored and didn't want to be my babysitter. One of Grimoire Heart's Seven Kin was going to crush my _skull_ between his fingers. And that's not talking about how Minerva tortured me during the naval battle. Hell, even the living link magic on the Thunder Palace hurt more than what you tickled me with three and a half months ago. I'm not glass; I don't break that easily."

"There was blood," he said, and some of the anger was leaving his eyes. Lucy could see the fear and doubt replacing it, combined with a healthy amount of guilt.

"Because I wanted to be a hero and not scream," she snapped. "I bit into my cheek and went too hard. That wasn't your fault, it was _mine_. If you had gone too hard, Capricorn would have stopped the fight or one of my spirits would have gotten in between us. It's a nasty habit of theirs. Don't you think I knew what I was signing on for when I agreed to spar with you?"

He looked at her, and she summoned all of her certainty and defiance into her face, willing him to understand that she wasn't afraid of what he could do to her. Something seemed to get through to him, and he sighed heavily. "Fine," he snapped. "I'll move back in and we'll both do physical training tomorrow."

"Fight me," Lucy said, feeling a momentary surge of emotion as she heard the same words repeated by Natsu. "In the afternoon."

"No way in hell," he said, releasing her wrist. "I'm moving back in; that's enough."

"Fine," she muttered. "I'm going to reheat my food. You want some?"

"Only after you've put the damn knives away," he grumbled, looking at the blades scattered around the room. "I want to fry whoever taught you that trick."

"No way in hell," she parroted back at him. "You can't attack my spirits."

"I thought it was Erza," he said, glaring at the keys on her hip.

"It was," she said, picking up the last of the knives she had thrown. "Or rather, Gemini as Erza."

Laxus groaned as he rested his head on the table. "Just stop throwing them at me when I can't retaliate."

Lucy grinned. "Don't disappear for three and a half months."


	30. Chapter 30

_From previous chapter:_

Lucy grinned. "Don't disappear for three and a half months."

**Chapter Thirty:**

He looked away from her, and she frowned, the brief moment of levity gone. "Look at me for a moment," she murmured.

Almost unwillingly, he turned to look at her again. "Don't do that," she whispered. "Don't avoid my questions and don't lie to me. All I want is not to be left again. You told me a while ago that all I had to do was ask when I needed something and I would get it. Well I need you because right now you're the only nakama I have left. I'm making progress and I'm getting better and stronger. But since you left, Virgo and the others keep looking at me strangely, which means they're worried. Since I can't figure out anything else, I'm going to guess that you're the cause."

"If you want someone to talk to, go find the flame brain," Laxus growled. "I'm not the type to sit and talk about things."

Slamming the knives into their box, Lucy glared at him. "If you didn't notice, he was the first to leave. You took me in, so now you have to deal with me. If you want to be guild master, you better get used to people talking with you."

"I know Blondie, I get it," he snapped, but she ignored him as she dumped the contents of her plate into the pot on the stove. "But don't expect me to become Mr. Feelings all of the sudden."

"As you said, if I wanted _Mr. Feelings_, I would have gone somewhere else. But you know what? Those first two months that I was here, I found out that you actually have the capacity to care for somebody. Of course, you went and shattered that little illusion by up and leaving, but hey, that's in the past, right?" She picked up Laxus's fallen plate and rinsed it before drying it. "You know, I'm amazed you even want to be guild master. No more running away when you get bored."

"Then maybe you should be guild master," he snapped. "You would be much better than I would apparently."

"If that was something I wanted, I wouldn't have left Magnolia," she hissed, her hand straying dangerously near the knives. "I don't have the strength to lead the guild and protect it."

"But you have the heart," Laxus said softly, dropping his eyes to the table. "And the guild loves you."

"Heart doesn't mean anything when Phantom Lord leaves three of your teammates bolted to a tree," she said bitterly. "Heart puts you in the infirmary sitting beside them as your guild goes off to avenge them."

"Strength without heart is just a bully with a big stick," Laxus said. "And that's who I am."

Lucy shook her head. "If you didn't have the heart for our guild that your grandfather does, you wouldn't have returned to Tenrou. You wouldn't have fought your father's entire team, and you wouldn't have taken in the ethernano to save the townsfolk."

"They still died," he growled, and she was surprised to hear as much heartbreak as there was anger in his growl. "I wasn't strong enough to stop him."

"Don't you subscribe to that particular pity party." Lucy said flatly. "There were nine demons. None of us who went up against the demons came out unscarred. They tortured Erza, and blocked all her senses. Did I mention that she was betrayed by an ex-council member too? Grey went up against an Ice Demon Slayer. He doesn't talk about it, but he hasn't been the same since then. Elfman's riddled with guilt because they used Lisanna to manipulate him into blowing up the guild. Wendy…she seems to be trying to get back to normal, but I could see it in her eyes every so often. She cut her hair short…the sight of her appearing like that on the battlefield, looking so much like Erza when she first returned to the Tower of Heaven…I'm not going to forget that. Mira…you know better than I do how much she locks things inside. The fact that you managed to fight one of them to the point where he self-destructed…nobody else made it that point. He was _afraid_ of you."

"And how do you know about facing the demons?" Laxus said softly.

"Did you forget?" Lucy whispered, her eyes stinging at the memory. "I fought two of them by myself. That was when I broke Aquarius's key. So don't you ever say that you weren't strong enough. The Raijinshu would still be at your side if you let them. Aquarius can't come back."

"The Raijinshu are the only ones who would ever be comfortable at my side," he said, his voice filled with self-loathing.

"Fairy Tail forgave you Laxus," Lucy said, moving the pot off the stove and onto the counter. "Fantasia was over seven years ago."

"For some of us," he whispered. "For others, it was just yesterday."

"Laxus, nobody was hurt seriously that day…" Lucy began, but before she could go any further he was on his feet and yelling at her.

"Did Levy ever tell you about what happened before Fantasia? Shadow Gear was beating up on Gajeel a bit and I joined in. When Levy tried to stop me, I fried her. The only reason she didn't get incinerated is because _Gajeel_ took the blast for her. He jumped in front of my lightning as if he wasn't already torn up by what I had done to him. Levy hadn't done anything to me, and I was going to hurt her."

"And then there's the Phantom Lord incident. I _could_ have come and helped out, but I was too damn busy planning to take over the guild to be bothered. Erza was the only S-Class there that day, and I knew it. I knew what had happened to Gramps too, but I only hoped it meant that I wouldn't have to force him to give up his position."

"Then let's talk about Fantasia. I started off by turning all of the girls into hostages just to get the others to play. Did anyone ever tell you that I nearly turned you into sand before the fighting even started? Yeah, I was making a point of how serious I was taking this. And then there's the matter of the Thunder Palace. Three hundred lacrima infused with living link magic so that if you were going to attempt to take back the town, you would pay for it. I heard all the screams that day, even from the cathedral. Sometimes I hear them in my dreams."

His eyes were wild, but with fear and pain. Laxus looked unbelievably haunted and broken as he stood before her. Lucy had pressed her hand to her mouth in shock as she watched the oldest dragon slayer fall to pieces in front of her, showing her a side that she was sure that very few had ever seen.

"The Raijinshu care about you Laxus. Your grandfather, those of us who were on Tenrou…when we stood in that circle, we all trusted each other. And the others took you back along with the rest of us, as if you hadn't even been gone."

"I tried to cast Fairy Law! Gramps had told me about the spell, and I knew _exactly_ what it would do, but I still cast it."

"The spell failed Laxus," Lucy whispered, eyes filling with tears. "That only shows how your heart's in the right place."

"No, it's not," he whispered hoarsely, slowly falling to his knees and staring at his hands. "You want to know what my nightmares are about most often? The Raijinshu fought at Fairy Tail, but they didn't fight to protect you girls. No, they were fighting for me, and I'm not worth that. Do you know what I told Freed that day? He came to try and get me to back down once Ever had been taken out and you girls were released. But I activated the Thunder Palace and told him to kill Cana and _that Phantom Girl_. I didn't even give her the dignity of using her name. Freed tried to tell me that killing them was too far, but when I ordered him to, he said that he would follow me down the path we were taking even if it led to hell. My best friend was willing to commit _murder_ for me because he believed in _me_ more than he trusted in his own moral compass."

"I know that he still has nightmares about that," Laxus said. "You can hear him some nights, screaming. Sometimes it's Cana's name, other times it's Juvia or Elfman. He caught the girls in a rune trap, forcing them to fight each other and he would fight the winner. Juvia threw herself at one of the lacrima rather than fight Cana, who she still barely knew. When Elfman tried to step in while he was torturing Cana, he nearly killed him, causing Mira to turn into her Satan Soul, and _she_ nearly killed him. Bickslow and Evergreen…I made them fight their nakama. They would have done whatever I said, because it was _me_ who said it. I would have made them murderers to fulfill my own ambitions. What type of man am I? Why would they follow me, even after that?"

Tears were streaming down his face, the first time Lucy had ever seen him cry before. She dropped to her knees in front of him, wrapping her arms around his shaking shoulders. "Oh Laxus," she breathed. "They love you because of your heart, and they trust you absolutely. Your friends, and your family, see the man you really are, and they can see past your mistakes and love you all the same. If your teammates would have followed you into hell, then you've got something that would make them do so. They're not afraid of you, or they wouldn't have tried their best to be excommunicated with you. The Raijinshu wanted to go _with_ you, even into exile. Sure, you messed up and they got hurt because of it, but we're all human. You saved their lives time and time again, and now I don't think that there's a single person who wouldn't stand behind you if you were going to lead us, even if you led us into hell."

"What if I lose myself again?" he whispered, face buried in her shoulder. "I don't want to fail anyone ever again."

"You never failed anyone Laxus," she whispered. "You might have made us all a bit sad, but you didn't fail anyone. And you won't lose yourself again because you regret losing yourself the one time so much that you will try your best to keep it from ever happening again."

"I just screw everything up and run away," Laxus mumbled. "Just like what I did with you."

"But you know what?" Lucy said, tipping his face up so she could look him in the eye. "You stayed with me when it mattered. Because of you, and Mavis, I didn't just wallow. If you had left me without helping me, it would have been pretty damn bad. But because you helped me, when you did leave, I could stand on my own. All those days, you were right there, giving me someone to keep trying for, even when I wanted to curl up and cry because I felt like a failure. And now I'm here for you, helping you stand up."

"You forgive me for Fantasia? For everything?" he breathed, his hands clinging tightly to her as if she was his last hope.

"Laxus," she whispered, kissing his forehead as she felt the tears sliding down her face. "I think you're the only one who hasn't forgiven yourself for everything. If I was standing in Fairy Tail right now, there wouldn't be a soul in that building who would resent you for making a mistake, even if some people did get hurt. You learned from it, and you're trying to be better. Sometimes, we trust someone who messed up once because if they show the amount of remorse you did, we know that they're never, ever going to mess up like that again."

Reburying his face in her shoulder, he clung to her as he cried, large broken sobs that shook his frame. Lucy cried with him, her arms squeezing him tightly, as if she was afraid he would shatter without her holding him together. They wept on the floor together as the night darkened and the food grew cold again.

*****I bet some of you thought that the fight was over! Nope, we still had a few issues to work out. But in all seriousness...these moments have been lurking in my head for a long time. Some of these lines haven't changed since I jotted them down at the very beginning of this fic when I realized that Laxus was going to have to open up to Lucy about what was going on in his head.**

**From here though, that's it for the really heavy stuff. There's only four more chapters left, and they're mostly fluffy romantic development. Thank you for your patience with the slow romance between these two. They had too much they needed to get through before they could focus on love. Next chapter should be up on Tuesday!*****


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